Oubliette
by Scion of Kushiel
Summary: Five years after the Underground, Sarah Williams encounters someone who couldn't, shouldn't be real. But is he?
1. Birth and Death

**Disclaimer: I do not own Labyrinth, I am not making any money off of this, please don't sue me. I just like to play with Jareth.**

_A/N: I admit it. I'm a shameless review whore. Give it to me, baby!_

_A/N2: Title of the chapter comes from T.S. Eliot's "Journey of the Magi"; "I had seen birth and death, but had thought they were different"._

**Chapter One: Birth and Death**

_What's in a Name?_

_Sarah Williams_

_"You disappointed me, Hogbrain."_

_"Hoggle," the smaller creature muttered defensively. He did not, however, say it loud enough for the irate man to hear. _

_His companion wasn't a man, precisely, though the term served well enough for the casual observer. He was shaped as a man, which was generally enough. His too-blue eyes darkened fiercely beneath feathered brows._

_Hoggle was a coward. The bulb-nosed, squashed face being had no problem admitting this. He had already angered the Goblin King with his betrayal; he did not want to enrage him further. And yet…_

_And yet he wanted, above all else, was to not be called Hogbrain. He remembered Hogbrain._

_As Jareth bean the inevitable threats invoking the Bog of Eternal Stench, Hoggle permitted himself the dangerous luxury of letting his mind wander back to Hogbrain._

_Hogbrain was the eldest son of the Hog clan, by far the ugliest and most stupid of them all. Their parents had been inordinately proud of him. Hogbrain was the tarnished jewel of their rusty, battered crown. Hoggle hated him. His inferiority was never quite so pointed as when he stood next to his eldest brother, and it pained him to see the shame in his parents' eyes when they looked at him. _

_Hogbrain was dead, of course, or Hoggle would never have had the fortune (was it really good fortune?) to come to the notice of the Goblin King. Hogbrain had been first to that exalted position. He had blissfully failed at nearly every task his liege and master had given him, providing endless hours of entertainment. When assigned to lead ungrateful wenches back to the beginning of the Labyrinth, though, he never failed. He had once come across a girl so stubborn that he'd finally had to bash her over the head and drag her by the hair back to the fates swarming with vicious, nasty faeries._

_Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, depending on your view, Hogbrain had come off second best with a falling rock the size of a small house. The Labyrinth had ancient rules on life and death, and no intentional murders were permitted against the human girls drawn into the high stakes fame of the semi-sentient maze. Accidents, however, could be unavoidable, so long as they were truly mischance, thus the wench had died as well._

_Their parents had grieved to be almost unseemly extent, liberally applying blame and injury to their remaining children for not being in the place of their eldest. Even their other favorite had received blows from that, and as the shame of the family, Hoggle had received far more than his share._

_No, he did not want to be called Hogbrain._

_Jareth's eyes narrowed to bare slits when he perceived his vassal's attention wavering. The slow, insistent tapping of his foot against the damp grey stone brought the creature's eyes traveling up the polished black leather knee boots, skimming quickly past the unambiguous bulge in the tan moleskin breeches, beyond the open white silk shirt to the scowling, sensual mouth. "You are beginning to frustrate me, Hogbreath."_

_"Hoggle," he ground out._

_No, he didn't want to be called Hogbreath either._

_Hogbreath had been the charmer, the success at the King's Court in the City. Their eldest had done the king's will; the second kept the king's temper. He had been clever, inappropriately intelligent, really. Still, he had gained their clan honor, so they had forgiven him the idiosyncrasy of his smarts. He had the knack for knowing what to say to keep the king's anger from spilling over. _

_He had also proven himself a surprising diplomat to other faerie courts. His insults, invariably leaning heavily towards bodily functions, were a prime example of his native charm, and yet he had schooled himself to learn to charms of other courts as well. He was blindingly offensive, but he managed to wrangle concessions that the king himself couldn't win of his fellow monarchs._

_Hogbreath's successes had made him very popular with the females of the Goblin court. Unfortunately, his eyes and hungers began straying towards the ladies of other courts. The ladies were appalled, their husbands no less so. The lord of one groped and hysterical woman had decided that his pride was more significant than diplomatic immunity._

_Jareth hadn't bothered to demand retribution._

_He hadn't much cared._

_So no, he had no wish to be called Hogbreath._

_"Hoggart!"_

_"Hoggle." He squirmed, thick fingers fidgeting under the cheap plastic bracelet around his wrist. Hoggart would have liked it. She had always been fond of such pretty, useless baubles._

_He adored his baby sister, the only daughter of their clan. She was a stunning example of goblin beauty, her hair coarse and straggly, her nails thick and sharpened. Her prize blessing was the third eye blinking coyly from the center of his forehead. Everyone had adored Hoggart._

_It was for her that Hoggle had begun hoarding jewels and trinkets, because she delighted in them so. Whenever he came home, he had some gift for her, and her walls and arms glittered with sparkling ornamentation. Hogbrain had been their parents' pride; Hoggart was their joy._

_His beloved sister, however, had fallen victim to one of the wandering pestilences that strike a land from time to time. Her third eye had become infected, clouded over permanently, her hair and nails grown thin and weak. She had kept to her rooms after that, her great beauty forever ruined, and died not long after. He missed her still, the pouch of jewels heavy at his side. _

_No, he certainly didn't want to be confused for poor Hoggart._

_"Do you truly no longer fear me?" Jareth mused aloud, empty crystal dancing between his long-fingered hands._

_"Yes, your Majesty," he stammered. "I mean, n-no, your Majesty, yes, no, your Maj-"_

_"Silence!" Jareth thundered. He swept his feathery blond hair from his face, glowering down at the groveling creature. "I promise you, Hogwart-"_

_"Hoggle!" He bellowed suddenly. "Hoggle, damn you! Hoggle, Hoggle, Hoggle!"_

_Truly surprised for perhaps only the second time in his life, Jareth the Goblin King watched the lumpy goblin stump furiously away._

_Hoggle didn't want to remember Hogwart._

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Now, to the assignment you'll be turning in." Professor Peables smiled as a flurry of murmurs and paper shuffling met his change of topic. "We're still working on character at this point. If you'll remember, your charge was to define a character by its relationship with others. Remember that this will help you when we eventually move into full pieces, with handy little things like plot development. Many of the most interesting stories are character driven plots, whose story is almost wholly dependant upon the way a certain set of characters interact.

"Now, you were all supposed to do this, you had an entire weekend to do it, and its requirements minimal. I don't want to hear any excuses. I will also not accept any late or handwritten work, so those of you scrambling to scratch something down can go ahead and give your hands a rest." He checked his watch: two minutes over. "All right, put your papers on the desk and get out of here."

The rotund professor watched his students scatter. He could see the handful of suck-ups clustering around the table he called a lecture desk, and he truly didn't want to get drawn into the void of intellectual creativity. "Miss Williams," he called. "Might I see you a moment?"

The young woman looked up from placing her notebook in the patchwork messenger bag, straight brown hair falling across her pale face. She straightened and brushed it back behind her, gray-green eyes silently questioning.

"Oh, good heavens, Miss Williams, how could you possibly be in trouble? Come along to my office." With this loud invitation, the brown-nosers reluctantly shuffled out the door, understanding that they wouldn't be able to steal his valuable time with inanities today.

"Was I just part of a rescue?" the young woman inquired quietly.

He grinned unrepentantly. "My dear Sarah, in quite possibly the entire university, you are one of the only students with whom I will willingly spend my time. Forgive me if I take advantage of that."

"Of course, sir." She smiled and shouldered her bag, politely waiting for him to gather the papers and folders together in his battered briefcase.

Arthur Peables rifled through the papers before closing his briefcase, pulling out one of them and skimming it as they began the short walk down the hall and up the stairs to his office. "What's in a name?" he read aloud. "Going into adaptations now?"

"I'll leave Shakespeare to the Lit majors, thank you." Sarah laughed softly, untangling her bag strap from part of her unbuttoned corduroy vest.

"Ah, Hoggle," he noted. "Another goblin story."

"I suppose so."

"You suppose? Wouldn't you know?"

"I'm still struggling with a definition of Hoggle," she admitted, grasping the tail as they started up the first stretch of stairs. "I can't decide of goblin should be defined as the small, ugly little creatures, or if it applies to the broader range of all Unseelie. As if any nightmare or bugaboo can be named a goblin."

Chortling, Arthur nearly skipped up the remaining steps. "Thank you for proving my point!"

"Your point, sir?"

"I have someone for you to meet," he explained. He stopped outside his office door, hand resting on the aluminum handle. "You'll forgive me, of course, but I confess to taking a great deal of pleasure in anticipating your expression."

Settling her weight onto one hip, Sarah raised one eyebrow. "You've been planning this."

"Does it really show?"

"To those who know you as anything other than a kid in a candy store."

The professor merely chuckled again and opened the door, motioning her to precede him into the tiny office.

She stopped cold in the doorway, staring at the apparition, it had to be, before her. A tall, thin man sat in one of the uncomfortable table wooden guest chairs, clearly at ease. Black boots rested casually on one corner of the battered desk, well tailored black slacks falling along long legs. His white dress shirt was untucked, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows and collar unbuttoned, and his plain black tie hung loosely. His features were both fine-boned and strong, almost hawk like in the fierce lines, with highly sculpted eyebrows. Dirty blond hair hung about his face in shaggy, feathered locks.

He looked like Jareth.

It had been five years since a petulant, self-impressed Sarah Williams had wished her infant half-brother to the goblins. She had thought, and if she were brutally honest with herself with herself still believed, that the subsequent adventures in the Underground had been real Years of belittlement and exasperations had finally convinced her to stop speaking of it as a real thing. It had also led her to give up the acting that her father and step-mother blamed for her 'attention seeking hallucinations'. However, it had held the unexpected benefit of developing her writing, as it had been perfectly permissible to speak of the Labyrinth in imaginary terms.

She had finally almost convinced herself that it had been just a dream. It consumed her mind, but it came out in dreams and stories, rather than her conversation. She was aware she was staring, but there before her, in Professor Peables' tiny office, was the face and form of the Goblin King, albeit it very, very different clothing.

Her pleasantly sadistic professor couldn't' have imagined a more entertaining reaction. He was, however, a trifle anxious at the severity with which the blood drained from her skin, how huge her eyes seemed against her delicate face. "Ah, good," he greeted the other man, clasping his hand warmly. "I'd hoped you'd be here."

"I don't think your student can say the same," he replied dryly.

"Sarah, may I introduce you to Professor Jareth FitzRoy. He teaches mythology and pre-Tudor British history. Jareth, this is Sarah Williams, the writer of those incredible goblin stories I shared with you."

Sarah, who up to this point had remained senseless with shock and confusion, was sufficiently roused at this to stare at her instructor with consternation. "Share with-"

"Oh, pshh," Arthur dismissed, flapping his hand airily. "It's the great purpose of every good writer. And you, my dear, are a very good writer. No," he continued, seating himself behind his desk and pointing her at the free chair. "I gave Jareth your work so that you two could begin talking about your goblins. You two seem to have very similar views and resources, and I have no doubt you'll have much to discuss.

"Too," he added, a mischievous gleam in his brown eyes, "I think you'll agree the coincidence in appearance is quite charming."

"Charming," Sarah agreed weakly, sinking down into the chair. She clutched her bag to her chest and tried desperately to straighten out her thoughts. She almost felt like her entire world had been thrust straight back into the Escher room. She grasped at the one thing she thought she could make sense of. "FitzRoy?" she asked. "Descendant of the bastard son of Henry VIII?"

Jareth chuckled wryly, his sensual, expressive mouth twisting in what might have been a smile, or a sneer. "Something like that. FitzRoy was actually the surname given to any bastard child of the British royal line, preceding Henry Tudor as well."

"Oh."

"I must say, though, it's quite well known of you. Not many are familiar with it."

She smiled slightly, the white linen sleeves of her poet's shirt draping over the laced cuffs. "Fitz was the Irish delineation of bastardy, Roy being the anglicized form of the French _roi_, meaning king. Henry Tudor gave the name to his bastard son, who later died of something akin to consumption."

Jareth merely nodded thoughtfully.

The silence was allowed to stew for nearly two minutes. Arthur snapped his briefcase open loudly, bringing a flinch from the girl and a sideways glance from his colleague. "Let's to lunch, shall we?" he suggested. "Sarah, you've a bit of a break, haven't you?"

"Yes, sir, nearly two hours."

"Jareth?"

The saturnine man shrugged elegantly. "I am free until tomorrow. By all means, let us do lunch."

Sarah said very little as they left Cooper Hall to walk towards the Marshall Center. The Center held more of a variety of food selections than Cooper, HMS, and the Library could claim, though they each boasted at least something. The two professors spoke lightly of various things, touching on paperwork and the hassles of the online academic system being down once again. It had to be as Professor Peables had said, just a coincidence. She was struck with the resurgence of memories though, as vivid in her imaginings as if she'd really lived them. Professor FitzRoy seemed neither young nor old, but rather, peculiarly ageless. Jareth, too, had had that bizarre sense of timelessness. Her thoughts refused to abide by logic and reason, flying thither and yon in shattered fragments of juggles crystals.

They separated briefly once within the building to avail themselves of the many selections the food court offered. Sarah ordered her customary soup and bagel from the tiny Einstein's in a robotic daze, scarcely able to return the pleasantries she usually exchanged so freely with the staff.

After waiting for her food to be prepared, she made her way to the seating area, crowded with students and filled with noise. A waving arm brought her attention to a corner pair of tables, and she obligingly sat down across from the two professors.

Arthur grinned, slathering mayonnaise and ketchup onto his chicken sandwich. "Look at you!" he exclaimed, pointing at their food. "You even eat alike."

Smiling thinly, Jareth speared a slice of cold ham in his salad, a small tray of sushi at his elbow. "If by that you mean 'healthy', Arthur, then certainly we provide a great contrast to you."

The slender girl snickered into her soup.

"I could have gotten pizza," the round little man retorted indignantly.

"Yes, because Chik-fil-a is ever so much healthier."

For the first time since walking into her professor's office, Sarah began to relax. Coincidence. It was all just unlucky coincidence. Though Jareth FitzRoy's manner was caustic and sharp, it was not the autocratic demands of an imperious, dangerous ruler. Perhaps it was simply his brand of humor.

He was British, after all.

Thus resolved to give no more weight to the insistent memories, Sarah took it upon herself to enter more freely into the conversation. It was stilted at first, as any such discussion between strangers must be, but it wasn't long before Arthur was able to tactfully withdraw, leaning back in his chair and watching the points fly.

The creative writing instructor didn't feel particularly qualified to engage in a debate in whether the Labyrinth from Sarah's mythical Underground had its foundations in Minoan labyrinths, pre-Roman hedge mazes, or crop circles, but he was certainly enjoying his observation of the pair that were qualified. On finding someone so knowledgeable and like minded on a subject so dear to her, the normally reserved Sarah became positively animated, her cheeks flushed and eyes sparkling becomingly. The spars centered on timing. Both Jareth and Sarah agreed that that Labyrinth was an archetypal representation of overwhelming obstacle. What they could not agree upon was which civilization had the earliest records of such a primordial image surfacing.

Checking his watch, Arthur Peables reluctantly gathered his trash together and stood. The other two abruptly ceased their conversation and looked up at him in startled confusion. "Unfortunately, I have a meeting with one of my graduate students," he admitted. "I shall have to leave you two to it. You've made an admirable start of it, though."

Jareth smiled wryly and shook the hand not occupied in clutching empty containers. "Give Laura my regards."

"Of course, of course. Sarah, I'll see you in class on Wednesday on Wednesday, if not before."

"Have a good day, sir."

The remaining pair watched him go in silence, the space between them plummeting back into awkwardness. Jareth was the first to break it, clearing his throat unnecessarily. "So, Miss Williams, tell me something of yourself. Are you native to Tampa?"

She blushed. "No, sir, and please, call me Sarah."

He smiled and gently touched the back of her hand with one elegant finger. "Very well, but only if you call me Jareth. I am, after all, not your professor."

She gave it a moment's thought and decided she'd try that another time, if there was such a time. "Yes, sir."

Seeing through it, the man merely continued to smile, leaning back comfortably in the plain plastic and metal chair. "If not from Tampa, then, where do you call home?"

_"Nowhere,"_ she thought, unable to suppress the resentful memory. On the surface, however, she merely folded her bagel wrapped into a precise square growing ever smaller and taller. "Outside of Haven, Connecticut," she answered. "One of my teachers recommended this as a good program. You, sir?"

"Oh, I come a little from here, a little from there," he told her with a smirk. "Whatever made you so interested in goblins and labyrinths? It's not the sort of thing most pretty young women write about."

His companion blushed again at the compliment. As she gathered her thoughts, having painfully learned to think before she spoke, he leaned forward against the table, scarcely able to conceal his burning interest in the question. "When I was younger," she said slowly, carefully crafting the rest of her response, "my mother gave me a script for a play called _The Labyrinth_. It was my favorite thing. I was constantly going to the park and reciting it, pretending to be the girl who traveled to the castle beyond the Goblin City. I suppose it was only natural that my curiosity and interest would grow from there."

Jareth steepled his fingers against his chin, his blue eyes glinting strangely. "That's everything?" he pressed.

"Yes," she lied, without a moment's hesitation.

His mouth creased in a small moue of disappointment, he sat back, drumming his fingers along the table. "I see."

For some unfathomable reason, she blushed again, ducking her head to hide it. "And you, sit?" she returned bravely. "What first got you into all this?"

"It's my heritage," he answered simply. "Goblins and bugaboos, faerie circles and changelings, sentient mazes within the mounds of the bean sidhe…it's all a part of my birthright. I made the decision as a very young child, while my nurse distracted me from my parents' entertainments with ancient stories, that I would learn all I could about it."

The flush on her cheeks only deepened at such an honest, meaningful reply, and she found herself quite without anything to say.

"I have made you uncomfortable," he observed ruefully

She shook her head automatically. "I'm not at my best with strangers," she explained sheepishly.

He stood and gathered their trash, shoving it into one of the overflowing trash cans. "Then let us depart for now, so that when we next meet, we'll no longer be strangers. Perhaps then, we may both be more at ease."

Sarah smiled in spite of herself, rising to her feet. "That sounds like a workable plan. It was a pleasure to meet you, sir."

"Jareth."

"Jareth," she agreed helplessly, cheeks flaming.

"One last question," he added, taking her hand as if to shake it. "Why were you so affected when we were first introduced?"

She hesitated briefly. She certainly couldn't tell him that despite all logic and reason, she still secretly believed that the Goblin King and his Labyrinth were real. After a moment, she settled upon something that seemed safe enough. "I almost feel as if we've said hello before."

"So long as it was not goodbye." He smiled, gallantly kissing her hand.

Sarah shivered in the warmth of early autumn. Fear? Excitement? Perhaps both. Perhaps neither. She slowly pulled her hand from his, her heart deathly heavy in her throat even as it sent blood coursing violently through her veins.

It was a beginning.

So why did it feel like no more than a prelude to the ending?


	2. Sunshine and Shadows

**Disclaimer: I do not own Labyrinth, I only take Jareth out of his tights and-whoops! But I certainly don't claim anything, and I don't make any money off of it, so please don't sue me. I also don't own USF, thanks be to God.**

_A/N: Shameless review whore, remember? Virtual milk and cookies to everyone who reviews._

**Chapter Two: Sunshine and Shadows**

"No wonder you look so pale. You always eat indoors."

Startled, Sarah looked up from her meal and books, finding Professor FitzRoy standing above her. She had gotten to know him sufficiently over the past two weeks to be aware that his scowl was teasing more than anything else. "Then what do you propose, sir?"

"Come with me," he ordered.

"I'm sorry?"

"Come with me." He frowned down at her and waggled his hand impatiently, reminding her of Professor Peables. "Come! Gather your things and come."

Bemused, Sarah nonetheless rose to her feet and smoothed the lid over her salad. He took her books for her, leaving her to carry only her bag and food. She followed him outside, squinting at the bright sunlight. Even after a year of college in the sunshine state, she who had grown up with turning leaves and crisp winds was still rather unused the summer variation on autumn. He led her out to what was generally known as the Green, a broad expanse of well-kept grass split occasionally by sidewalks leading to other sections of the sprawling campus.

"Sit," he commanded, sinking down into the soft grass.

She obeyed with a grin. "Yes, sir."

"Sarah, am I your professor?"

"No, sir."

"Are you in any of my classes?"

"No, sir." Her smile only grew, knowing where this was leading.

"Then will you please call me Jareth?"

"Yes, sir."

"Say it: Jar-eth." He might have continued, but her delighted laughter was ringing out unreservedly, and he found that he really didn't want it to stop. Leaning back on his elbows, he calmly sipped a smoothie while he while he watched her bring herself back together, wiping tears from dancing eyes.

The thing was, he knew she wasn't just being obstinately polite. Though not raised in the south, she'd acquired some of its mannerisms, including the somewhat annoying courtesy of calling everyone 'sir' of 'ma'am'.

"So," he began after a time. "I was re-reading that piece on Hogwart-"

"Hoggle," she corrected with a snicker.

He made a face, but conceded to the point. "Hoggle, then. At any rate, I noticed you referred to 'vicious, nasty faeries'. I thought that was quite an odd view."

"They bite," he replied, rubbing her thumb reminiscently over the tiny white scar on her forefinger "And they can be frightfully stupid."

"Most consider faeries to very beautiful."

"They are, really." She rummaged in her bag for her rather thick binder for her writing materials. She had several dividers in it, with one section keeping its pages in plastic protectors. "Here we are."

He shifted closer to her to better see the pages, his right arm coming across her back as he braced the hand against the ground. She stiffened reflexively, but relaxed when nothing else occurred. Smiling thinly, Jareth ran a finger over the open page in her lap. Captured simply in pencil, delicate faeries stared out from the paper, impish eyes full of mischief and curiosity. Turning the pages, he found a wide variety of the creatures depicted, with wings ranging from thinly veined dragonflies to wide colorful butterflies to delicate long feathers. Their clothing and expression were equally broad ranging, and some few of them had names and histories written in precise script beside their image.

He smiled fondly at one labeled 'Snowfall', an ice faerie clad in diaphanous silk and crystal. It did not so much hide her perfectly formed body as flaunt it, and her face showed both sensual smoldering and resentful petulance. Beneath her name, a few aspects of her personality were written in precise script, along with 'King's Mistress, 3 years', which had been underlined. "How can this be?" he asked. "Your story had the king as more or less a man, yet your faeries seem quite tiny."

Sarah shook her head, brushing her dark brown hair out of her face. "Snowfall had polluted blood, and wasn't pure far. One of her ancestors was a Shifter, and it gave her the ability to change her size. She hated being human-sized, because it made her wings very awkward and rather useless, but she would do it to please the king."

"You speak of her with such authority," he mused, his nail tracing a path along the image's cheek.

"I've written a few stories about her, so I've gotten to know her very well. She was interesting."

"I think if I were not friends with other writers, I should worry about your sanity," he noted lightly. "You speak of them as if they're real people."

"Maybe they are," she shrugged, comfortable enough to skirt the edges of what she thought was honesty. "I don't pretend to know all that goes on in the world; perhaps they truly exist somewhere. I just write my memories."

"Memories?"

"Memories of dreams," she amended, backpedaling at his sharp look. "I've obviously never met Snowfall, but her story weaves through my mind at night. If a person exists only in dreams, don't they still exist?"

"You will have to ask the School of Philosophy for that," he answered with a laugh. "You are an unusual person, Sarah Williams, that sees faeries as vicious."

"They are what they are. Humans can claim nothing greater, after all."

Lying back on the grass, Jareth reached into his lunch sack and tossed a piece of fruit to her. "Here, have a peach."

She dropped it quickly, glancing at him apologetically. "Um, thank you, but no. I'm not fond of peaches."

"No?"

"I had a bad experience with one," she replied blandly. She picked it up gingerly and cradled the fuzzy sphere in the palm of her hands. "Haven't eaten one since."

He took the peach back from her and bit into it, grimacing. He spat it back into the bag, glowering at the dark spot of corruption within the flesh. "Things aren't always as they seem," he sighed, feeling her flinch beside him. "That was a beautiful fruit."

She stared at him with wide eyes, her hands trembling finely.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

_Prince of the Land of Stench_

_Sarah Williams_

_He didn't have any friends._

_He used to-how did it go? Once upon a time? He thought that was a rather silly phrase; after all, some things have been known to happen more than once. But, be that as it may, there had been a time spanning many years wherein he had had friends, and that time was no longer._

_It hadn't even been one by one that he'd lost them. No, he got in one little accident, and suddenly everyone was fighting to be the furthest from him. Shifting resignedly on his rocky perch, he reflected yet again that he really couldn't blame them. In fact, he would have done the same thing himself. _

_You see, Eetchy Stickyfingers of the Dark Morning clan had made on misstep so grave, so life-altering, that no sensible person would now associate with him. It was such a small thing, really; the thin sole of a leather sandal he'd been meaning to replace had slipped on a damp rock and sent him reeling back, arms grasping wildly at the air but unable to break his fall._

_Right into the Bog of Eternal Stench. _

_Now, Eetchy Stickfingers, who had once made a very good living at sneaking into people's homes and stealing their valuables, was cursed with an endless, titanic reek that could never be washed away or masked. It was an interesting thing, to his mind, that owning the stench in your own body in no way accustomed one to the odor all around. He had been almost a dozen years in the Bog, and yet he was every minute repulsed by the foul, disgusting smell that assaulted his delicate nostrils._

_Eetchy was a crossbreed, as so many denizens of the Goblin Court were. His mother had been a will o' the wisp, raped by a Dark Morning goblin in one of the interminable goblin wars against the Seelie Court. He'd had a lot of time alone to think on things he ordinarily would never have pondered, and he had come to the conclusion that when goblins were allowed to war against the neighbors, they were less likely to cause trouble to their sidhe monarchs, thus the hereditary rulers encouraged the wars as frequently as possible. As soon as he was born, his mother's relatives banished him to his father's, but he'd been marked for a unique fate due to a more graceful crossing of blood than most were afforded. He'd inherited his father's size, perfectly respectable for a goblin, but his mother's fineness of face and form. He was far too beautiful for a goblin, but it lent him grace in the Seelie Court, from which he delighted in selecting his victims._

_He had been an excellent thief. He had claim to little enough modesty to prevent his acknowledgement of his own skill. He'd even once managed the steal the High King's Cauldron, though the Goblin King had forced him to return it. Tiny wars that were little more than skirmishes were of little to no import, but a full fledged war led by the entire Seelie Court would be disastrous. And he had returned it, with only one attempt at subterfuge. He did have principles, after all._

_Sitting on a rock at the highest point, Eetchy watched the sun rise over the murky, bubbling green of the bog, the stench boiling up and breaking the surface in flatulent bursts. As much as he hated it, it was necessarily his home. The former thief regarded the unexpected beauty of the light. It might have been entirely beautiful if he'd had a cold. If he'd been unable to smell, it would have been a truly great morning._

_Fin_

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sarah walked out of her final class on Friday, grateful that she had a light workload over the weekend. She had another creative writing assignment, and a history test to study for, but those wouldn't take all that much time. Her cell phone rang in her pocket and she pulled it out, seeing HOME emblazoned across the tiny screen. She hesitated, uncertain if she wanted to risk the well-being of a good mood. Sighing, she gave in to the inevitable and answered the phone. "Hello?"

"Sarah?"

"Toby!" she cried, with genuine delight. She wasn't sure why her six year old brother was the first one on the phone, but she'd take the small blessings. "How are you?"

"I had a dream last night," he lisped, through a gap where a front tooth had recently been.

"A dream? What kind of dream?"

"I was walking on upside down staircases," he told her proudly. "And there was a man who turned into an owl."

"Oh, God," she whispered, closing her eyes. She opened them just in time to avoid colliding with a bust of Martin Luther King Junior and resolved to keep them open. "Toby, please tell me you didn't tell your mother."

A short silence dashed her hopes. "I thought it was neat," he said softly. "But she started yelling."

"Toby, does she know you're calling me?"

"She dialed and then went to say hello to Daddy."

She stifled a dirty word only by remembering that it wouldn't make it any easier to deal with Karen. "Sweetie, when you have dreams like this, it would probably be best not to talk about it. Your mom doesn't like hearing about those kinds of dreams."

"Why not?"

"Because she doesn't, Toby, and you'd best not ask her why."

"Toby? Did you get through to her?"

Sarah groaned softly as her stepmother's voice came through the phone from a distance. She heard the static of the phone being passed and braced herself.

"Toby, go say hello to your father. Sarah?"

"Hello, Karen."

"Don't you 'hello, Karen' me," her stepmother snapped. "Sarah, I thought we'd agreed that you wouldn't fill your brother's head with this nonsense!"

"I haven't told him anything," she argued. She irritably waved off a classmate trying to approach her, pointing to the phone at her ear. "I didn't even get to talk to him the last time Dad called me."

"Then where is he getting this from? It's not like it's a coincidence that it's so close to what you used to spew."

"Karen, I promise you, I haven't-"

"You promised me, Sarah! For three years we put up with all of your stories, your flights of fancy. When you finally grew out of it, the only thing we asked was that you not pollute your brother with your attention seeking. That was all we asked and now-"

"And I haven't!" She cried into the phone, holding it between her ear and her shoulder as she wrestled with the lock on her bike chain. "Karen, I haven't told him anyth-"

"Enough! Your father's had a long day and doesn't feel like dealing with this right now. He'll call you later tonight, and you had better pick up. Do you hear me?"

"Yes, Karen, I hear you, but I promise you-"

"He'll call you tonight."

Incredulously hearing the dial tone as he stepmother severed the connection, Sarah snapped. She yelled wordlessly, savagely kicking her bike in the rack.

"Now what did that poor bicycle ever do to you?"

She whirled around in surprise, her messenger bag sliding abruptly down her arm. Jareth regarded her with unconcealed amusement, a briefcase held loosely in one hand. She suddenly felt very ashamed and childish, ducking her head and adjusting her bag to cover her blush. "Hello, sir."

"You didn't answer my question, Sarah." His foot tapped against the sidewalk as she undid the chain, coiling it and placing it in her bag."

"I got a call from home," she sighed. "It…frustrated me a little."

"I can see that."

She couldn't help but smile crookedly at his wry tone, looking up at him through her eyelashes. "I suppose kicking it was a bit silly," she admitted, laughter in her gray-green eyes.

"Nonsense," he admonished. "It was perfectly charming." He gave her a considering look, tugging lightly on a feathery forelock. "And," he added, "It's much more reasonable than crying about it not being fair." He didn't miss her flinch, but merely smiled thinly. "Why did the call upset you?" His blue eyes narrowed sharply at her hesitation.

"My baby brother did something to worry his mother," she said finally, carefully. "Karen tends to lash out indiscriminately when she's frantic."

He allowed the silence to grow heavy until she started to fidget with her handlebars. Reaching out, he brushed her chin with slender fingers and gently forced her to look up to meet his eyes. "I wish you'd trust me, Sarah."

"It's…complicated," she whispered, flushing hotly.

"It usually is," he observed dryly. He cocked his head to one side in a strangely birdlike gesture. "What are you doing right now?"

"Um…talking with you?"

"I meant this evening," he corrected with a smirk.

"Probably just going home and waiting for a puzzled call from my father," she answered, groaning.

"Come to dinner with me," he invited, delighted to see her blink with surprise.

"I'm sorry, sir, what?"

"Jareth, and I asked you out to dinner." Seeing her about to protest, he took her hand and pressed a lingering kiss to her knuckles. "Please."

Her cheeks stained a painful red, Sarah nodded helplessly, trying to gather back her voice. "I thank you then."

"Come. We can put your bike in my car."

They walked in silence to one of the staff parking lots, Sarah feeling decidedly anxious and Jareth allowing her to explore that and find comfort in it. The simple fact was that Sarah had never been on a date. She'd been a distinct loner in high school, and while she was slowly making friends within her major, that didn't include dating. The idea that she was about to embark on that particular adventure with a professor, regardless of whether or not he was **her** professor, was more than a little frightening to her.

"Here we are." He gestured to a slightly battered old station wagon whose trunk was the cleanest she'd ever seen in a vehicle. "Let me get this open." He popped the hatch and helped her muscle the bike into it, finally laying flat the back seat to allow more room. Moving around to the side, he opened the passenger door for her, making sure she was settled before closing it.

He started the car and steered them carefully out of the lot. "Do you like Chinese?" he inquired.

"Yes, very much."

"There's an excellent Chinese place just a block or so away," he told her conversationally. "Their wonton soup is quite the best I've ever had."

"In middle school, my friend and I used to make egg rolls with her mother, who was born in China." She smiled and ran her thumb under the chest strap of the seatbelt. "Xiu-li almost spoiled me for take out, but it's been years since I've seen her."

"So you and your bother not have the same mother?" he asked, bringing her back to the phone call.

"Karen is my stepmother," she replied easily. That wasn't a difficult answer to give. "She and my father have been married a little over seven years."

"And your brother is-"

"Six." She frowned slightly. "My father's not like that."

"His loss," he shrugged.

She scowled, unsure whether he was joking or not.

Was dating always so awkward? Maybe it was only this stilted when the relationship was unconventional to begin with. It still unsettled her how very closely he resembled the Goblin King she tried not to remember.

He parked by the copy store that provided auxiliary readers for those classes whose professors were unsatisfied with sticking to the books. It was a corner of a small shopping plaza, and she followed him to the tiny take out restaurant. He handed her a folded menu and waited patiently for her to peruse it; it seemed he came here often enough to know what he wanted already.

Sarah automatically reached into her bag to grab her wallet, but stopped at a vice-like grip in her wrist.

"Please, Sarah," Jareth said, a pained expression tightening his face. "I invited you. It is my place to pay, and my pleasure."

"Oh." She blushed again, releasing her wallet. "Thank you."

"Are you ready?" At her nod, he stepped up to the counter to order. "Beef and broccoli combination, with a wonton soup, and the lady will have…"

"Sweet and sour chicken combination, white rice instead of fried, and a wonton soup, please."

"Sixteen dollars, please," the woman behind the counter replied, and Jareth pulled his wallet from his back pocket.

Sarah wandered over to one of the four tables for dine-in. Jareth joined her a moment later with soy sauce packets and two sets of chopsticks. "So, Arthur says quite a few of your stories mention this Bog of Eternal Stench," he began, idly picking up a soy sauce packet again and again with chopsticks. "What is that, exactly?"

"Pretty much what it sounds like," she shrugged. She didn't particularly want to talk about the Underground at the moment, not with Toby's dream reawakening the possibility of the whole experience having actually occurred. "It's a swamp that emits and absolutely repulsive odor, and if it touches your skin, you have the reek about you forever."

"What about after death? Does your body still retain it?"

She blinked. "I don't actually know," she answered slowly.

"Never dreamed of a corpse for a story?" he twitted her, and she smiled reluctantly.

Jareth retrieved their food and questioned her playfully as they ate. They touched on stories or novels, on classes, as well as, minutely, family and history. He watched her carefully without seeming to, judging by her reactions when any subject began approaching delicacy and steering the conversation each time to something new.

She might not have consciously known what he was doing, but even as naïve as she was, she was vaguely aware that he was doing something. Even if no more than being entertaining, he made it possible to speak of the Underground as if it truly was as mundane as her papers for Geographical Perspectives, or the self-conscious model for her Life Drawing class. She was grateful for it, even as she didn't understand it, and she made a conscious effort to relax.

When their meal was finished, they walked slowly back outside. Night had scarcely fallen, the stars barely discernible from the lights. "I suppose it's time to get you home," he sighed.

"Actually, sir-" She stopped and grinned at his look. "Jareth. I live just around the corner from her. It's a safe bike ride at night."

"Don't be silly. I'd much prefer to see you home safe."

"Please." She laid her hand gently against his arm, feeling the muscles tense reflexively. "I need the ride to clear my head. I live literally two blocks away, if that. Please."

He read her face, truly open and expressive for the first time, and finally nodded, moving to his car to open the trunk. Jareth pulled her biked out for her. Once she was about to mount it, he cupped her cheeks in his hands. "Dream sweet, Sarah." His lips barely brushed against hers, settling instead right at the corner where it curved into her cheek.

Flushing hotly, she stammered a goodbye and took off, long hair streaming behind her. She rode quickly home, carrying the bike through her tiny apartment to put it on the small balcony. She stood for a time at the rail, staring out into the deepening dark. A hollow hoot pulled her attention to one of the trees cultivated by the complex, and she met the fierce golden eyes of a white owl.

"Go away," she told it crossly. Her phone went off in her pocket and she swore, heading back inside and locking the owl out with all the other living nightmares.


	3. Flight of Icarus

**Disclaimer: If I owned Jareth, I would be doing much more interesting things with him than writing about him.**

_A/N: On a serious note, reviews really do make my day. Fics are my escape from in my insanely stressful senior year of college and my crazy retail job, and finding out that people are reading my stuff helps bring it all to a manageable level. So please review! Be the person to make me smile!_

**Chapter Three: Flight of Icarus**

"But that's not possible!"

"Why not?"

"Because they're a figment of your imagination!" Geoffrey Mann, one of the students in the Elements of Fictional Writing class that Professor Peables had come to call his Theory of Creativity class, leaned forward in his seat, pen tapping against the desk in agitation. "If you create a character and define every aspect of its personality and history, if you plan its place in your story, then it is simply impossible to be surprised by it."

"I disagree."

Arthur glanced at a girl whose hair was in black and hot pink spikes. "That's not good enough, Miss Walden. Tell me why you disagree."

"Because a story doesn't always go where you think it will," she replied lazily, popping a bubble with her gum. "Just because you plan a story out doesn't mean it's going to go where you think it will. Plans can change."

"Besides," her friend Ashley added from her side. "If your character can't even surprise you, how do you expect it to surprise your reader?"

"Since when did surprising your reader become more important than knowing your character?" Geoffrey demanded.

"Since readers expected something other than boring?"

A slender boy with shockingly orange hair raised his hand respectfully. "What about-"

Arthur grinned and leaned back against his desk. Pudgy arms crossed over his chest, he watched the debate volley back and forth. This was his favorite type of class, the rare kind that could take an idea and fly with it. It left him with remarkably little expenditure of energy, seeing as all he had to do was moderate when the occasion called for it. He let the discussion continue, keeping an eye on who was and was not participating. "You're awfully quiet today, Miss Williams," he noted abruptly. "What do you have to say in the matter?"

Sarah looked up from a sketch she was working on, brushing her glossy brown hair away from her face. She had been content just to listen, but she gathered her thoughts together. Everyone in the class paused to hear, for Sarah was a talented author in her own right, but more importantly, she was the professor's acknowledged favorite. "I think it entirely possible for a character to surprise you," she said finally. "The entire idea is to present a real, valid person in the guise of a character. Once you've created him or her, once you've breathed life into the body, you have to accept that like any other child, the character can grow in ways you don't foresee. The most tellingly realistic pieces, never mind the unreality of the settings, are the ones that allow living characters to explore their world of their own will."

Geoffrey frowned, the pen going a mile a minute against the desk. "But **you** create them," he argued.

"And you create your children in the way you raise them," she agreed easily. "But eventually, they cease to be mere extensions of yourself and become distinct individuals."

"And the rest of the discussion will have to wait, because we only have a minute left. Your assignment is to let your character surprise you. I don't care what you write about, so long as there is a genuine element of surprise. Be honest with yourself; if you're not surprised, try something else. We'll continue this on Friday." He nodded to the students as they gathered their things and left. "How goes things, dear Sarah?" he asked, a twinkle in his eyes.

"It goes well," she answered, smiling at him.

Her professor looked at her carefully, for he was genuinely fond of her, and concerned for her. She looked both rested and tired at once, a weariness that went beyond the simple physical need for sleep. It wasn't anything he could put his finger on precisely, but for all that, he could see by the freshness of her skin that she had in fact slept. "And how are things going with Jareth?"

She graced him with a wink and a broader smile, her secretive laughter following her out of the room.

Arthur grinned again; that seemed to be enough of an answer.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sarah checked her watch, breaking into a light jog. Upon arriving at her Thursday afternoon class, she and her classmates had found a cancellation notice. If she hurried, she could probably make it on time to Jareth's classical mythology course. She was interested to see what he was like in front of a class. Reaching Cooper Hall, she fell in with the mass of students filing in to the lecture hall.

There were one hundred fifty people on the roll, Jareth had told her; looking about her, she could hazard a guess at perhaps half at them being present. Certainly, no one would notice one more person in the room. She settled in near the middle back, not separate from her peers but not precisely with them, either.

At precisely two o'clock, Jareth entered the lecture hall and walked up on stage, and Sarah was tickled to hear a collective sigh from the gaggle of girls sitting next to her. With brisk efficiency, he set up his lapel mic, pulling his notes for the day from his briefcase. "Good afternoon, class," he greeted, the microphone squealing and settling. "As always, if you should notice yourself nodding off, kindly ask your neighbor to hit you if you start to snore."

Amidst the titters, Sarah snorted. She had little doubt that he would command full attention of the class.

He palmed the remote for the slide projector, stepping to the edge of the stage. "Now, as I promised, we'll move away from the incest and into the violence, which is all the rest of Greek mythology. Welcome to the House of Atreus, one of the only two multi-generational families to so fascinate the Greeks."

Sarah listened, awestruck, as he began his lecture. She'd taked the course the spring before with a different professor, who bored them to tears with his attempts to "prove" the myths. That and his inability to speak intelligible English. For the first time, the characters in the legends became as real to her as Hoggle and Ludo. Within the butchery and violence, there was a kind of sadness lingering in the veins of each generation. His precise voice softened with his passion for the subject, his lean body thrumming with the coiled energy of his slow pacing. Spawned from the spilled blood of Hermes' son, the curse manifested first in Atreus and his brother, Atreus' nephews paying the first price of innocent blood. It followed Atreus into his sons Agamemnon and Menelaus, those famed heroes of the Trojan War. Agamemnon, husband to Clytemnestra, who was sister to Menelaus' beautiful Helen. Agamemnon, who for sake of a fleet wind from Aulis lured his daughter with promises of illustrious marriage only to purchase his war with Iphigenia's blood. Agamemnon, who foolishly left his wife to mourn her lost daughter and brought back his spoiled wages of war. Agamemnon, who even as he lay butchered by his wife and her lover, set in motion her death at the hands of their son Orestes.

Flipping the image on the screen to an artist's representation of the Sacrifice of Iphigenia, Jareth spied Sarah among the students, his blue eyes lighting up. He resisted the urge to speed through the rest of his lecture, though the impulse itself was both unsettling and foreign. At three forty-five, he wrapped up his lecture. Five minutes left. "Are there any burning questions that won't be satisfied by tonight's readings?" When silence met him, he smiled. "Enjoy the extra five minutes, then, and I'll see you on Tuesday."

Getting to her feet, Sarah tried not to laugh hen the girls next to her put away notes covered with little hearts in the margins. She followed them down to the stage, where with a wicked smile, Jareth reached for her through the gaggle.

"So you finally came," he greeted, touching his lips lingeringly to the back of her hand.

One of the girls sighed, but they all quickly dispersed.

"Give me two minutes," he told her, kissing her palm. "I just need to put away the microphone."

"Take your time. I don't have any more classes today."

Jareth packed things away quickly, turning off the system and grabbing his briefcase. "Come to my office."

She wasn't sure if that was really a question, but it seemed to expect some kind of answer. "Sure." He led her to and through the labyrinth of tiny offices on the third floor, unlocking his door and opening it for her.

His office seemed to suit him, she reflected. Framed prints of faeries and goblins, most done in simply pencil or charcoal, hung on the scant wall space not taken up by the bookshelf overflowing with books and papers. It was neat and spotless, yet there was a kind of fastidious clutter to it. Knick-knacks lined his desk in careful order. A single white feather caught her eyes and she stretched her hand towards it.

Jareth snatched her hand away, bringing it back to his lips at the sight of her wide, startled eyes. "I'm glad you're here," he said simply, shifting onto his desk and sending the feather fluttering to the floor.

She swallowed against the intensity of his gaze, drawn against his chest by the gentle pressure of his arms. "My class was cancelled."

"I'm glad," he repeated. He tilted her chin up and brushed her lips with his, tenderly, gently, giving her the chance to move away if that was what she wanted. It wasn't. With a sigh that melted against his mouth, she relaxed into his embrace, eyes fluttering closed.

The spell, for that's what it felt like it had been, shattered with a shrill, insistent beeping. Blinking, she flushed and stumbled away. He swore and switched off the alarm on his watch. "I have a short meeting with a grad student and his advisor," he explained. "Wait for me here?"

She nodded mutely, watching him take a folder from a file cabinet and leave the office. She wasn't sure why the clicking of the door seemed ominous, but her hands rose of their own volition to smooth away the goose bumps rippling up her arms. Moving behind the desk, Sarah sat in the comfortable, padded chair, automatically sliding off her mules and brining her knees to her chest.

She just wanted her brain to shut off. Sitting at his desk, starting at a small bronze owl, she just wanted the blessed ability to no longer think. What was wrong with her that she couldn't get the Goblin King out of her mind? A fictional being, the product of a deranged and lonely imagination, and she couldn't help but hold him up next to this flesh and blood vessel of ice and fire.

"He has a desk labyrinth," she whispered, hands trembling finely. Off on the right edge of the wooden desk, a bronze maze offered a mindless, haunting kind of release. Taking up the elegant stylus, she dragged it slowly through the runs, half-expecting the walls to change and shift behind it. "And where in here falls the oubliette?"

Sarah couldn't be sure how long she traced the puzzle, her hand moving with a will of its own. The stylus fell from her fingers into an open lower drawer. She frowned slightly, not wishing to invade to privacy of his desk, but she didn't want to just leave the silly thing there, either. Opening the drawer, she entirely missed the simultaneous opening of the door, her attention fully focused upon the contents. Four crystal spheres, gleaming with secrets, nestled in a protective bed of deep red velvet. She froze, hand half reaching for the stylus, staring at the orbs.

Jareth came round the desk, taking in the scene in an instant. Even much later, Sarah couldn't be sure if she had blinked exceptionally slow or if he had just moved that fast. However it happened, she came to alertness with his lean frame between her and the drawer. Without comment, he leaned against the edge of his desk, expressionlessly scrutinizing her trembling.

"What-" she started hoarsely, but he shook his head.

"Things are not always as they seem," he warned her quietly. "Your curiosity may lead you to turns you are not prepared to take."

He didn't think it was possible for her grey-green eyes to widen any further, but they managed. He could see the fear, the panic, begin to glaze, and he pushed her gently against the back of the chair. Cradling her colorless face in his hands, he eased forward, trapping her in the seat without seeming to loom. "Do you feel yourself about to fall, Sarah?"

She nodded slowly, once, but made no further movement.

"Step out."

"What-"

"Step out," he commanded firmly. "You're falling, Sarah. Don't fight it."

Otherworld eyes flashed before her briefly, arched eyebrows and dramatic lines of color. She raised her arms to ward him off, to lock the Underground back into her fancy, but his hands tightened not quite painfully against her head.

"Fall into me, Sarah," Jareth breathed hypnotically. Before she could even hope to answer, he pulled her gently forward, capturing her in an awkward, helpless bend of resistance and submission. His warm breath flushed her cheeks, his soft skin caressing hers. Silken lips brushed her forehead, her nose, her cheeks, finally laying siege to her mouth.

Her mind swam, torn between running and dying, and she whimpered as his slender fingers tangled tightly in the hair at the nape of her neck.

"Fall into me."

His tongue lightly stroked her lower lip and she knew no other course than to surrender completely to him, lost in the sweet taste of his mouth. There was something she was forgetting, some buried instinct screaming through the haze to run, chased off by the teasing euphoria. There was something she was forgetting, but she couldn't fight to cling to it when his attentions moved to her ear, her neck, her collarbone, back to her mouth.

Sarah was indeed falling, held in that peculiar moment of first potential, that single second in which a sudden but contain reversal may still rescue one without injury. She was falling, yes, but gravity was a familiar, comforting force.

It was only floating that frightened her.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

_Music Box_

_ By Sarah Williams_

_"You'll blind yourself, staring into the sun that way."_

_"It increases the brilliance when I look away," he answered without turning from the window. "It makes it dazzling."_

_"Icarus liked the sun, too, and look what happened to him," the voice harrumphed._

_Jareth smiled slightly, glancing back over his shoulder at his ancient Nurse. "Ah, but what a view he had," he replied mildly._

_"Get away from the window, you daft boy. I've linens to air."_

_Peculiarly, the fierce Goblin King took no offense at her gruff command, merely moving from the open stone and laying back on his richly clothed bed. "Will I never be rid of you?" he asked lazily._

_"You want to get rid of me, boy? Have a child, name an heir. Then I'll pass along."_

_No one was really quite sure what Nurse was. She'd had many names over the centuries, shedding them all to cleave to the only one that had any true meaning. With wrinkled skin that was a dark silvery-brown, she could have been a brownie, or even some sort of beautiful goblin, but her large eyes were grey and clear, almost human but for the depth of knowledge and experience. Her hair was entirely hidden beneath a white cap, a spotless white apron always tied over her clothing despite the overall filth of the city._

_Nurse had only one purpose in life as far as she was concerned, and she had fulfilled it far longer than anyone could now remember. If even she still recalled her origins and age, she certainly wasn't telling anyone. For countless generations, Nurse dedicated herself solely to the welfare of the Royal Child. There was very rarely a case of Children; there was almost always only one, as if preparing the infant sidhe for a lifetime of loneliness amidst its Goblin denizens. She stayed with her charge until it had its own child, which was why Jareth, though long out of the nursery, was still under her wing in her opinion. _

_She flapped the sheets out into the open air, draping it over the sill despite the clouds roiling in ominously overhead. It was the Goblin City; the clouds were always gathering._

_"I'll get around to it," he answered finally._

_"And I'll not be after rearing bastards," she reminded him sharply. "Legitimate bloodline only."_

_"They why on earth did you raise me?"_

_Nurse slapped his leg, glowering at him for good measure. "Your mother would have died before being unfaithful."_

_"Yes, Father would have seen to that."_

_Gathering her basket of mending to her lap, Nurse situated herself comfortably in the window seat she'd forced him to vacate. "A Seelie princess has no place in a Goblin court," she said decisively, biting off a thread "She was far too delicate."_

_"It was the price of the treaty."_

_"Does it change the facts?" Jareth and Nurse sat in companionable silence, she with her sewing at the window, and he with his contemplation of the velvet canopy of his bed. She peered at him from under silver eyelashes, gauging the effects of her next statement. "_She_ would have done well here."_

_"She's gone," he snarled, good mood vanished._

_Nurse was entirely unfazed by his temper. "Prunella brought the figurine back from the Dumps," she continued._

_"Enough, Nurse!"_

_"Don't snap at me, my boy, I wiped your backside."_

_He blinked and scowled. He didn't know anyone else who would so easily make him feel inadequate. Even the High King of the Seelie, his distant uncle, didn't succeed near so admirably, nor so often. "She's already gone."_

_"That doesn't mean forever." Sliding off the seat, the ancient and ageless caretaker set a filigree doll cage, perhaps six inches in height, by his hand, quickly returning to the window. "Your great-grandmother came back."_

_With another feral growl, he sat up and hurled the pretty trinket at her. Vexingly, Nurse didn't even bother to duck; she knew he wasn't aiming to actually hurt her._

_"Come here, my boy."_

_"Nurse, why will you now leave it be!"_

_Grey eyes flashed with icy rage. "Jareth, you are my king; when you command, I will obey. But I am your Nurse, and when **I** command, **you** obey."_

_Startled by the authority she rarely displayed so openly, Jareth reluctantly complied, coming to the window only to have the open-sided music box pressed back into his hand._

_Regarding him compassionately, Nurse stroked his feathery blonde hair, her wrinkled hands old and familiar. "If you will not be honest with anyone else, my boy, be honest with yourself," she instructed him gently. "You miss her."_

_"She was cruel."_

_"She was young," she countered. "You miss her."_

_He closed his eyes, but that was admission enough._

_"In all your mistress, Jareth, in all your liaisons, your affairs, your casual games, you have never had a female affect you so, nor had one so well liked by the Labyrinth itself. Do not discount its understanding."_

_A little boy again, Jareth knelt before his Nurse, resting his head against the eternal comfort and assurance of her bony knee "What can I do?"_

_"Think." She tapped one gnarled finger against the false gold. "And you'll find that the answer lies within the game you've already begun to play."_

_Almost absently, his attention not fully on the action he was performing, the Goblin King would the key beneath the base. _Pavane for a Dead Princess_ whispered out, tinny is its captured sound, and the brunette doll in the shimmering pink dress twirled slowly to the tune, her arms outstretched for a partner that could never enter through the bars of her gilded, elegant cage "I will have her," he murmured._

_"Gently, my boy," Nurse warned. "She is young still."_

_He smiled crookedly, his blue eyes dark with a foreign pain. "I have to have her, and I will be Dedalus himself and craft wings if I must."_

_"Just don't fly too near the sun. Great rewards require great risks, but there are limits."_

_"I am the Goblin King, Nurse. I know no limits."_

_"Then you will only lose her again."_


	4. Chicken Soup for the Goblin Soul

**Disclaimer: Sigh. Labyrinth still isn't mine, sad as that is. **

_A/N: As always, please review! You people really make my day._

**Chapter Four: Chicken Soup for the Goblin Soul**

Jareth didn't look up at the knock on his door, his full attention immersed in recording the grades from his history tests. "Enter," he called, following the line to make sure he put the correct grade with the correct person.

"Jareth" Arthur Peables entered the office, his normally jolly face drawn with concern. "Have you seen Sarah?"

"Sarah?" The blonde man immediately put down his pen, focusing on his friend and colleague. "What's wrong?"

"I've had her for two semesters, and she's never missed a class. Now all of a sudden, she's missed two, on either side of a weekend. I just thought maybe you might have seen her."

"No, I haven't," he murmured. "I thought perhaps she was burdened with school work, so I left her alone." Jareth didn't add that her fear had been so visible that he'd felt it better to give her time. Arthur didn't really need to know that. "She missed tow classes? Just your classes?"

"I don't know," the creative writing professor admitted. "I don't know her other professors, and it isn't like high school where we can cross-check attendance. However, I don't see my class being the one she chooses to skip, if that's what this is."

"This is true." Rising to his feet, Jareth closed his roll and folder, slapping his pen against them. "I'll check on her."

"You know where she lives?"

He gave Arthur a long, flat look.

"Right. Silly question."

"I'll let you know if she's alright."

Arthur was left alone in the office after his blond colleague rushed out. He shook his head with relieved confusion. "He really must care for her, then."

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sarah clawed her way reluctantly to awareness, vaguely aware of a sound that shouldn't be. The pounding continued so she rolled off the bed, her hair in a tangled mass about her pale face. Her long legs were bare beneath the hem of the faded men's dress shirt she'd stolen years ago from her father, but she didn't really intend to open the door. She braced herself silently against it, one eye against the spy hole.

It was Jareth.

She frowned, resting her forehead against the wood. Had she ever given him her address? She didn't think so, but it **was** Jareth, so she couldn't really be sure. Starting to move away, back towards her bed, she was arrested by his muffled voice.

"Sarah, I know you're in there."

She said nothing, staring at the knob.

"Sarah, please let me in," Jareth pleaded, somehow managing to retain his dignity in the action. "I know you're there, so please let me in, let me see that you're all right."

Didn't vampires have to ask permission to come into a home? She didn't think he was a vampire, not at all, but there was a sense of inviting danger…hell, she was tired. She couldn't even think straight anymore.

Her hand moved to the dead bolt, unlocking it before she could think better of it, and opened the door only enough to show her face, the rest of her still hidden behind it, "I'm fine," she told him, but her voice didn't come out as steady as she would have hoped. "I'm just tired."

"You're more than tired," he disagreed, trying to meet her gray-green eyes. "Sarah, talk to me."

"I'm fine," she insisted.

"Sarah."

Giving way to just the slightest hint of power in his crisp voice, she backed up and allowed him to enter, closing and locking the door behind him. Her voice was barely a whisper. "I'm fine."

"Arthur is worried; he said you've missed two classes in a row." He looked around him with interest, sliding his hands into his pockets. The apartment was tiny, a studio that was nonetheless laid out to make the most of what little space there was. To his left was a miniscule kitchen with lots of cabinets, a drying rack on the counter holding a few bowls, plates, and glasses. There was another door on his right, partially open to reveal a bathroom decorated in green and cream. Ahead of them, before the sliding glass door leading to the small patio, a queen sized bed took up much of the area, the covers tousled in cocoons against the headboard that had its back to the window. Resting between pillows and the wall, a whit tiger poppet guarded the room. A smallish tv with its accessories sat on the bar between kitchen and room, placed so that the headboard could provide support while watching.

What was truly impressive, though, was that nearly every available inch of wall space was covered in papers, most of them filled with her neat handwriting, others bearing detailed sketches of faeries, goblins, and all manner of Otherworld creatures. It was a writer's haven, a construct of ideas and half-developed thoughts written down in the midst of an inspiration.

"I've been sleeping most of the weekend," she admitted, aware of his scrutiny. "I've just been so tired."

"Physically tired?" he pressed keenly.

"That too," she mumbled.

"I pushed you too far, didn't I?"

Sarah blinked at his question, for it held a curious kind of matter-of-factness to it. It was almost more of a statement, a simple acknowledgement of a mistake. "I don't-"

Jareth cupped her face in his hands, softly kissing her forehead. "I'm sorry, Sarah. I keep forgetting how very innocent you are."

She blushed and brushed ineffectually at his hands. "I'm not-"

Pushing her gently against the wall, he touched his lips tenderly to hers, not pressing, not threatening, simply moving his mouth against hers until precious fire scalded her veins. "You are innocent, Sarah," he breathed against her ear. "That's not a bad thing."

Keeping her eyes closed, Sarah let her head droop onto Jareth's shoulder, her breath short and quick.

"Have you started to feel more rested?" When she mutely shook her head, he smiled slightly, raising one hand to smooth her hair. "Then I shall give you the cure my old Nurse gave me."

"And what's that?" she asked disinterestedly, when it became obvious he was going to say nothing further without prompting.

He scooped her up in his arms, carrying her over to the bed and tucking her into the nest of blankets. "A guarded sleep," he answered with a chuckle, tucking the tiger into her arms. "Sleep now, Sarah. I'll keep your dreams."

To her great surprise, she found herself drifting off in the rather questionable safety of his arms. Over the weekend, her dreams had been haunted with screeching white owls and falling towers. Blessed relief, for once, the dreams did not come.

Jareth continued to stroke her hair long after she fell asleep, finding simple pleasure in gently smoothing away the knots. It was a puzzle, though distinctly less challenging than one presented by a person, and he had always rather enjoyed puzzles. He cast about for something to occupy his mind that wouldn't awaken the young woman in his lap, his sharp blue eyes falling on a paper clipped handful of pages sitting atop the laptop on the nightstand. He picked it up and pulled away the clip, tracing a slender finger over the handwriting.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

_1-2-3 Not It!_

_Sarah Williams_

_The seven year old pouted when the small hand came down lightly on his back, but he obediently stopped. "Olly olly oxenfree!" he called, and a dozen heads appeared in different points around the room. "I'm It now," he told them, covering his eyes and beginning to count._

_The human and goblin children scattered amidst the staircases. Upside down, rightside up, sideways…each and every staircase was traversable, if only from the correct perspective. It might have been where MC Escher had received his inspiration, standing in a corner and watching the young of two races defy basic laws like gravity in an ancient children's game._

_Reaching twenty in a roundabout sort of way, the human Brian pulled his hands from his eyes. "Ready or not, here I come!" He charged up the stairs before him, flipping down the far end to dun down the underside of the case. There weren't a lot of places to hide in the room, not really. Hiding was simply a question of always being on the other side of the staircase. He could hear Julie's muffled laughter, but that too far away, and even though he could see Weezla's head peeking out at the far end of the room, but he'd never get there in time to keep the goblin from running elsewhere._

_Leaping across to a new platform, he peered over the edge, finding no one on the other side. Looking up, he found little goblin Gragle winking at him cheekily before racing to the other side of the above stair._

_Finally, Brian managed to catch Carter by the ankle, passing off the reigns on Ithood._

_Jareth smiled as he looked on from the doorway, watching Carter chase down Gragle with swift efficiency. It always reassured him to see the children wished to him thus enamored. The children were often saved from uncaring families by the callous wishing away, their mothers or sibling, still mystic and young enough to believe in goblins and faeries, unwilling to navigate the labyrinth to reclaim the child. When their game was finished, they would rush out to the labyrinth in a tangle of limbs and laughter, or perhaps return each to his or her goblin parents._

_He glanced down at the fragile, beautiful girl clutching his hand, her face still bruised despite being healed and fed. She might have been six, though she looked younger, huge grey eyes staring at the goblin and human children playing upside down and sideways. "Would you like to play with them, Alais?" he asked gently._

_"I'll fall," she whispered, tightening her grip on his much larger hand._

_"You'll learn not to," he assured her. "And it's never the fall you should fear, only the inconvenient landing. Luki!"_

_A goblin boy with green-brown eyes came cautiously to the Goblin King, keeping part of his attention on the It Gragle. "Your Majesty," he piped, bowing low._

_"Alais wishes to join the game, Luki, but you will have to teach her to walk the drops."_

_Luki's long, flexible ears, normally kept flat against the back of his head, unfurled and waggled at the human child cheerily. "Alais," he pronounced carefully, holding out a clawed hand. "Luki!"_

_The beautiful child looked up at Jareth, terror written into her pale face, so he knelt before her and smoother her white-blonde hair back from her cheek. "Do not be afraid, Alais," he told her. "They will be your friends now, and they will not hurt you."_

_Swallowing hard, she nodded and bravely took Luki's hand, allowing him to lear her up the staircase closest to them. _

_Jareth smiled tightly, staying to watch the game progress. So many human children came to him broken and battered, the fairy tale belief and innocence extinguished forever. Even if the geis of the labyrinth had not been upon him, the Goblin King could not have refused such neglected angels. He didn't ever turn them into goblins, of course, that was quite impossible, but he always hoped that by telling the wisher that, she (it was almost always a she) would be willing to brave the labyrinth to take them home. Only once had he not been disappointed. Only once had a young girl seen it through, succeeded in taking back her brother from an ill-thought wish._

_She would forget, he knew, as would the boy; it was the way of the labyrinth, to defend itself from the curiosity of mortal minds. Watching protectively over the mix of children, at little Luki bringing timid Alais into the game, he wondered if maybe they wouldn't be better of if they could recall. Such broken, desperate angels, and they had only this tumbling down city to repair them._

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sarah awoke slowly, her nose coming to alertness before any of the rest of her. Something smelled delicious. Her eyes blinked open, peering out from her customary nest of blankets, and she felt distinctly turned around. Why was she facing her headboard? She twisted around so that she was back to the wall, the tv in her line of sight, and saw Jareth standing in her kitchen.

"I thought you might be hungry," he said without turning to her. "Would you like some soup?"

She frowned, sitting up and feeling the blankets slide into a heap all around her. "I don't have any soup in the house."

"No, you didn't, so I ran to the Einstein's on the corner. Do you like chicken noodle?" When she nodded nutely, he ladled the meal into two large soup mugs, bringing her one and settling on to the bed next to her. "Are you feeling better?"

"Yes," she answered, surprised to find that it was true. She was still tired, but it didn't run as bone deep as it had. She sipped carefully at the lightly steaming broth. "How long did I sleep?"

"You needed it," he replied obliquely. Jareth gestured around the apartment with his spoon. "Has it always been your habit to create a hidey-hole for yourself?"

"Hmm, my own little oubliette."

"Oubliette?" he repeated, lifting one highly arched eyebrow.

Sarah really didn't believe that he needed the clarification but she gave it anyway, wondering if there was still a way she could be wrong. "Oubliette, from the French _oublier_, to forget, meaning "little forgotten"," she murmured. "It's a place you're sent to be forgotten."

"Does it work?"

"I don't know." She laughed mirthlessly, hands twitching against the warm mug. "Sometimes I feel as if I never left."

"You have not been forgotten," he breathed into her ear, and she decided it was best for her own peace of mind that she not reply.

"You know, I used to believe it was all real," she mused, running one finger along the rim. She could feel his arm tighten reflexively about her and chose to very carefully press forward. "It took years for Dad and Karen to convince me that it wasn't, and even then, I'm not sure they ever really succeeded."

"Life isn't worth living if there isn't a little magic to it," he sniffed.

"Magic has its drawbacks," she said flatly. "I'd prefer to keep twelve hours."

Jareth set aside his mug on the nightstand, placing hers beside it. Leading her by pressure on her shoulders, he repositioned her to pillow her head against his left shoulder, the rest of her sprawled across her lap. They sat in silence, him stroking her hair until drowsiness reclaimed her, resting bonelessly against his chest. Eventually, his crisp voice softly broke the stillness. "Do you ever wonder what it would have been like, if you had stayed?"

She considered the question sleepily, meeting his eyes, but he wasn't giving anything away. "Not anymore," she answered finally.

"Because you grew up?"

"Because I'm beginning to think I'm still living it." She was perversely pleased to see a flicker of something-concern? Fear?- cross his face, even if it was only for the briefest of moments.

Jareth kissed her fiercely, and whatever small victory she had just won melted away with her helpless acceptance of it. She knew it was within her to fight, but she just didn't want to. As frightening as it was, it was also exhilarating, fire racing through her. She was not safe in his arms, that much she knew, or at least not safe as she formerly defined it.

She was not safe, but she was secure in a way, secure in the sensation of falling. At least until she landed.

Jareth pulled away, feathery blond hair falling over them both as he regained control. "I should let you sleep," he whispered.

"I'll only dream."

He produced a crystal sphere, pressing it into her hands. She didn't ask where it came from, nor did he offer. "Dream then," he ordered simply. "And I shall watch them as they come, letting only sweet ones by."

"Liar," she murmured, but she was already falling asleep, hands cradling the crystal to her.

He pressed a soft kiss against her temple. "I never lie, Sarah. I may bend the light, but I do not lie."


	5. Through the Looking Glass

**Disclaimer: I do not own Labyrinth, nor do I make any money off of them. If I did, do you think this fic would have been on hiatus for so long?**

_A/N: I'M SORRY!!!!!!! I'm a HORRIBLE person!!!! I am so, so very sorry for having such a long delay on this story, but real life intervened in a huge way. Things seem to be settled for the moment, so I'm going to make a grab for it while I can. On the plus side, my thesis was not only completed, but recently revised and submitted to a publisher. Cross your fingers for me! And, as always, please review!_

**Chapter Five: Through The Looking Glass**

_Darling of the Oubliette_

_By Sarah Williams_

_She could hear water dripping into the puddle on the floor beside her, a queer plop that echoed through the tiny space. It sounded larger than it was in the complete darkness. She wasn't sure where the water was coming from- the ceiling had looked to be a solid, seamless piece of rock before the light had died- but there was water dripping nonetheless. She had always water to be clear, taken drop by drop; certainly the water she pulled from the tap at home was, but this liquid was somewhere between a rusty red and a stale yellow, not resolving enough to properly be called orange. Her throat burned with thirst, but she wasn't about to drink that clinging poison._

_She set her back against the slimy wall and slid down until she was resting on the damp, uneven floor. Her hands were cracked and bleeding from beating against where the door had been, her nails torn from searching for any kind of seam or hinge to hint that she hadn't just imagined there ever being one. She cradled her hands to her with a muted whimper. __Perhaps she _had_ simply imagined that there had ever been a door, hat there had ever been anything other than this consuming darkness._

_Damn Hoggle anyway. He had promised to guide her through the labyrinth and instead had led her here. She should have known better than to trust him- hadn't he betrayed her time and time again?- but she wanted so desperately to believe there was something good in him._

_Why had she come back?_

_She knew there had to be a reason, but it only __flirted__ at the edges of her awareness, refusing to let her capture it. It had taken so long, but she had finally accomplished it, finally re-immersed herself in normal life. Her last visit had been filed away with other juvenile flights of fancy, marked for an eventual succumb to fading memory, never to be touched on again._

_And yet, here she was. _

_She couldn't remember how she'd gotten there. She could remember the fall, yes, could recall the sudden descent into the specific location, but she couldn't remember how she'd gotten back to the Underground in the first place._

_Second place?_

_She'd left it behind and somehow it had overtaken her, leaving her as empty as it had before. She was utterly, entirely alone._

"Your eyes can be so cruel,"_ she sang brokenly, her voice reverberating and distorting. _"Just as I can be so cruel…I can't live within you."

_Jareth__ sat back on his throne, one leg cocked comfortably over one of the arms. A gleaming round crystal rested in his glove hand, showing the pale girl in the dank oubliette. He smiled grimly, his too-blue eyes fierce and feral. "My dear, you have not yet begun to see cruelty."_

_The young woman looked up sharply as the voice seeped through the walls of her prison. She knew that voice; it was the pitch and timbre of her deepest nightmares, the dreams that left her shivering with sensations she didn't know how to embrace. She wasn't sure if she wanted to embrace them._

_"I see I shan't have to re-introduce myself."_

_"Why have you brought me back?" she demanded bravely. Her hands curled into fists at her sides, the torn edges of her nails digging into her delicate, __scraped__ palms. _

_"You brought yourself back. I merely guided you here."_

_"I was happy where I was."_

_"Were you?"_

_She didn't answer; there really wasn't any safe reply she could give._

_"You haven't even asked me if I had a welcoming gift for you."_

_She directed a glare to the open air that made him chuckle in his throne room, observing her through the secretive sphere. "Your gifts are not welcome."_

_His eyes narrowed. Pulling his leg off the arm of the throne, Jareth leaned forward, lifting the __sphere__ to eye level. "I stand poised to offer you everything, and you want nothing?"_

_She leaned her head back against the wall, exposing the pale column of her slender throat. Silence fell through the tiny oubliette, save for the unsteady drip of the water. Her voice, when she finally spoke, was thin and __thready__, barely __audible__ even to his waiting ears. "I just want to be forgotten."_

With the sole exception of the campground, all of Fort Desoto National Park was supposed to close at sunset. Somehow, with the charm of a smile and his crisp British accent, Jareth had gotten permission from the park rangers to be out on the beach as the stars came out. Sarah didn't question it, just as she didn't question many of the things he did or said.

It was an unspoken rule of their relationship, whatever that relationship even was. Whenever anything stepped too close to potential truth, too close to the fantastic and terrifying dream, they simply let it pass without question or comment. It was easier that way, easier to pretend that the nebulous truth hovering just beyond the range of words didn't exist. There were times when the questions would rise to her lips unbidden, but she never let them escape their soft prison walls.

They sat together on the old cannon block just on the outer edge of the surf, ignoring the signs posted against climbing onto the fractured limestone. Decades, even centuries, before, soldiers had mounted their huge cannons onto this broad pedestal, aiming it at the galleons that sailed toward them, protecting the long strand of Tierra Verde from invaders from the Gulf of Mexico. The cannon had long since been removed to the fort, to be made into a harmless historical showpiece, and the block itself had broken into several pieces that had been known to shift dangerously without notice, hence the signs. In reality, however, children and adults alike climbed atop the first rise, skipping across to the foreblocks and skirting the small whirlpools that formed in the gaping center. The former tops, now sometimes tops and sometimes tilted to the side, were polished smooth, but the inside of the stone was still rough with pieces of shell compacted long before anyone living had been born. There, sitting on the foreblocks, the spray leapt up at you to flirt against your face, the breeze constantly tugging at your hair and clothing and whatever else you brought out with you.

It was Sarah's favorite place in the entire world, and up until now, it had also been her safest. This was where she had come to escape, when she could get a ride across the bay. For hours, she would sit in the sun and sand and breeze on the old cannon block, reading or writing, or sometimes even just staring off into space. She liked to watch the waves roll in and out against the packed sand, losing herself in the repetitive action until she ceased to be Sarah and simply was. When the sun began to set, knowing she'd have to leave, she had always stretched out onto her back, watching the colors slowly bleed from the sky until she could see the stars. She loved when the stars began showing against the deep lavenders and mauves rather than waiting for the darker indigos. It was an alien landscape for those few breaths, something foreign and breathtaking and utterly amazing.

Jareth laid beside her, propped up on one elbow as he leaned slightly over her. His lean body partially shielded her from the worst of the chilly breeze coming down from the north. Neither of them had said anything for some time, their lazy attention drifting with the clear expanse of stars and the gentle clashing of the waves against the stretch of rocks clustered in the nearly white sand.

"Do you have plans for All Hallows Eve?" he murmured, long fingers stroking her silky brown hair away from her face.

"Mmm…" she replied noncommittally. He waited patiently and she eventually elaborated. "It's a Tuesday, and I have Professor Peables early Wednesday morning, so I'll probably just stay home and hide from the trick or treaters. You?"

He nodded absently. "A friend of mine is throwing a masked costume party on Saturday night, to warm everyone up for the holiday. Would you like to go with me?"

"Hmm."

His thin lips curved in a crooked grin. "Was that a yes or no?"

Sarah really wasn't a party person; it required being comfortable around people, which she nearly never was. But, as she thought through it, it probably wouldn't be nearly as bad as the frat kegger a classmate had dragged her to freshman year. Jareth was an adult; surely a party with an older mean age would be more tolerable. "If you wish. I haven't any costumes, though."

"No? You never played dress up when you were younger, pretending to be a princess or heroine or some such?"

She ignored the subtle barb, her eyes closed to breathe in the soft shushing of the waves over the shells. "I used to; I packed away my costumes with all of my other silly toys."

"I'll have my friend find you something," he promised. "It can be a surprise."

"Oh, goody."

His laughter washed over her, low and dry. "I will make every assurance of your modesty," he told her, running a calloused fingertip along her cheek. "You will not look the slag."

Opening her eyes, she looked up at his face, so close and yet revealing so little. "When is your birthday?" she asked quietly, lifting her left hand to thread her fingers through his feathery blond hair.

She didn't miss how still he became, his eyes losing focus as he stared at something she couldn't see. "It's been a long time since I celebrated a birthday," he said finally, voice as cold as the wind.

"It couldn't have been so long that you've forgotten it entirely," she teased. It occurred to her a moment later that perhaps it was entirely possible.

"It means something to you?"

"It's a birthday," she shrugged, letting her hand fall back above her head to lie against the rough limestone. "It's something most people celebrate."

"Haven't you figured out by now that I'm not most people?"

"I don't think there was ever a time I didn't know it."

As they always did with such statements, they left it alone, letting it hang between them like crystalline daggers.

"How old are you?" she asked idly, turning her gray-green gaze back to the thick blanket of stars.

"So many questions tonight," he noted, warning carefully hidden in his tone.

"Yes, well, a girl generally likes to know a few things about the man with his tongue down her throat."

Jareth winced at the crassness of it, but couldn't deny that it was truth. "I am older than you."

"I should hope so."

"You've changed."

And they let it lie.

When had the rule been made? When had it been silently decided between them that all references to an unhappily ever after would simply die without reply? There could have been easy answers, of course. He'd read her stories, there were many actors and magicians who used crystals in contact juggling, she had met others with a distinctly unsettling presence.

But she knew the answers weren't that easy, knew the truth wasn't that comforting, so she abided by their unspoken commandment. She let it lie.

Jareth lowered himself further on his elbow, his warm breath ghosting against her neck. "So many questions," he whispered, and she shivered at the dark promise in his voice. His teeth nipped lightly at the sensitive skin there behind her ear, trailing a slow, leisurely line down to the curve of her shoulder. Her breath flowed out of her in a startled gasp when he bit down hard into the muscle, and she tried to pull away. He sank down onto her, his body a warm and solid weight against her. He licked it gently, soothing the skin, kissing back up her throat and jaw to latch onto the spot behind her ear.

Her left hand came up to push him away and he caught it without a second's pause in his ministrations, lacing his fingers through hers and pinning the hand to the blanket above her head. Sarah opened her mouth and he promptly covered it with his own.

Jareth teased at her lips, plumping them with tongue and teeth until they were swollen and full. He pulled back slightly, regarding her; he loved it when she looked like this, her face flushed innocently and her beautiful eyes dark with confusion and arousal. He returned to her lips, kissing her dizzy, teasing her tongue to tangle with his, patiently drawing out her breathless responses with expert skill.

She sighed softly when his attentions shifted to her ear and pulled her right arm from under her head, not to push him away but to drag her nails delicately along his scalp. A low growl rumbled in his throat, dangerous and seductive. His hips ground roughly into hers, his hands gripping her hair, and she gasped to feel him hard against her. She was innocent, yes, but not entirely ignorant. She arched into him instinctively.

"That's it, Sarah," he breathed. "Just let it go."

"Jareth-"

"Ssh." One hand slid from her hair to cup her cheek. He peppered her face with kisses, the hand continuing its slow journey down. His fingers gracefully undid the buttons on her men's dress shirt and she shivered with more than cold.

"No, someone could-"

"No one will come, Sarah," he reassured her, and in her confusion, she couldn't place whether there was no one else on the beach or if he simply knew no one would come. His grip on her hair tightened, pulling deliciously against the nape of her neck and keeping her from sitting up to grab for the open halves of her shirt. "I swear to you, Sarah, no one will come."

She felt the heavy swirl in the air and tried to tell herself it was just the wind.

Blue eyes narrowed slightly, Jareth rubbed her soft stomach in firm circles, calming her like she was an anxious pet. Maybe that wasn't far wrong. She slowly sank back fully onto the limestone, every line of her body screaming with tension. He started kissing her again, leading her away from herself.

Not until she returned his kisses with uncertain ardor did he allow his free hand to brush across one fabric-covered breast. He could feel her stiffen in his arms, but he simply repeated the feather light touch, fingers whispering against the plan white bra cup. That didn't really surprise him; though the material was soft and silky to the touch, Sarah didn't really strike him as being a vivid color and lace kind of girl.

She relaxed marginally and he continued his patient seduction, his hand sliding around her side to splay against the smooth skin of her back. She whimpered against his questing tongue, but didn't tense, and it was but the work of a moment to flick apart the clasp.

"Jar-"

"Ssh." He rested his forehead against hers, his fierce eyes meeting hers steadily. "I'm not going to hurt you."

_"Liar!"_ her mind wanted to scream, but she didn't- couldn't- stop him from sliding the cups up over her breasts. She hissed, the chill air of late October hitting her and immediately tightening her nipples into hard peaks.

"Beautiful," he murmured, cupping one in his hand. It didn't quite fill it, his fingers flattening against the pale skin turned white by moonlight. He rolled his thumb over her, feeling the tremor beneath her skin, and shifted more fully onto her, bracing himself on his forearms so she wouldn't have to bear all of his weight. His chest, covered in butter soft suede, pricked and soothed her skin simultaneously, his mouth suckling at her neck.

Part of her mind, the small whisper that stayed stubbornly rational even in the influx of stimulation, knew what he was doing, knew that he was making tactical retreat until he deemed it safe to continue. She could have told him that there was no such thing as safe, but that was too close to their silent rule, so she kept her peace such as it was. She was terrified and lost, floating in a sea of sensation that couldn't help but leave her bereft and falling. Keeping her eyes tightly closed against the serene beauty of a night sky unmarred by city lights, Sarah let her breath sigh against his ear, shifting the baby fine strands of hair that spiked away from his scalp.

Jareth smiled at this small sign of encouragement, his lips pressing against the frantically beating pulse in the hollow of her throat. He shifted his weight carefully, not wanting to scare her by lying fully atop her, and rubbed his cheek against the swell of one breast, his breath whispering against its twin. She trembled beneath him but didn't tense, and he slowly swirled his tongue around one taut peak. Her back arched strongly and he caught more of her in his mouth, pushing her back down onto the block.

His mouth was wreaking havoc on that small, stubbornly rational part of her mind, sparks of pleasure shooting through her to parts that she'd never even known existed. His fingers curled tightly in her hair, tugging gently but firmly, and not even the cold stone against her back could convince her that she wasn't falling through broken clocks and towers that fell up. Her chest felt heavy, her breath coming in short, desperate gasps as the unfamiliar coil drew tighter and tighter. The coil flew apart and she cried out, his arms wrapping around her. She could vaguely hear his voice murmuring through the chaos as she fell apart, forging in her a new link to the dangerous dreams that she'd almost forgotten once, and now couldn't escape.

She lay in his arms long after her breath returned to normal, her eyes still closed, the wind pricking goose bumps all along her pale flesh. When she suddenly shuddered, he pulled himself back up her body to study her face, his eyes dark with concern. "Sarah."

"I'm cold," she said quietly.

He quickly righted her bra and shirt, carefully sitting up and pulling her into his lap. His arms came around her again, this time imparting some of his warmth.

Together, the two of them sat on the crumbling cannon block until dawn, barely even shifting, just listening to the inexorable draw and crash and of the gentle Gulf waves. It was permanent and immutable, something which really appealed to Sarah at the moment. She needed something permanent; she couldn't trust anything else, not even that small, stubbornly rational part of her mind that had finally proven it could be defeated.

The week leading up to the Halloween party left a sour taste in Sarah's mouth, a heavy sense of foreboding shadowing everything she did. Professor Peables had looked concerned during their three classes together, but she had waived off his concerns with the same old excuse of being tired. College being what it was, she obediently promised to go to the student health clinic and get tested for mono, though she knew her brand of illness wasn't physical in nature or effect. The barely hidden gleam in Jareth's eyes when he picked her up at her apartment was not in the least comforting, but she got the feeling that he knew that. They made the drive in near silence after the obligatory small talk and lies about how their respective days had gone.

His friend, whose name Sarah still didn't know, lived in one of the old Victorians tucked into a back corner of Hyde Park, shadowed and slightly run down and perfect for the dark atmosphere of the promised party. Flickering lights gleamed in the streaked windows. Jareth parked his station wagon several blocks away in a communal parking lot, throwing a garment bag carelessly over his shoulder after he helped her out of the car. Still the silence held reign as they walked up to the house, passing through the narrow aisle the hedges made around the front walk.

He didn't miss how she shrank away from the clinging branches in the hedge, the sticky twigs that needed pruning and tried to catch at anyone walking by, but he rewarded her concession to their rule by letting it pass without comment.

Their hostess met them at the door wearing as grotesque leather mask whose eye ridges were heavy and angry above the dark, twinkling gaze. Blazing auburn hair trailed wildly down her back in large, frizzy curls, her mouth a crimson slash beneath the elongated nose of the mask. "I have just the costume for you," she told Sarah without preamble or greeting. Her voice was nasal and sharp, harsh against the silence that had held away for so long. "Come with me."

Sarah allowed herself one pleading look, following docilely after the woman when she was met with no more than Jareth's amusement. The heavy feeling in the pit of her stomach was growing with each step that took her deeper into the once-grand house that had long since fallen to neglect and disrepair. The faded floral wallpaper peeled from the wall in long, yellowing curls that brushed against her shoulder as they mounted the creaking wooden stairs. There hadn't been many cars in the lot, nor had any noise carried through the thin walls to the night air, but now she could hear the loud murmur of a large group of people somewhere within the house, a cacophony of voices competing with each other and clashing in chilling discordance.

"It's a surprise," the hostess told her, ushering her into a sparsely furnished guest chamber. "You have to keep your eyes closed until you're completely ready."

Stifling a sigh, Sarah sat in the chair the woman held out impatiently, closing her eyes. "The party seems to have started already," she noted cautiously, wincing as a brush ran roughly through her thick hair. "Are we late?"

"Jareth is never late," was all the response she could get. She stopped trying to ask questions.

She sat quietly through the long task of her hair, uncertain of what this woman was actually doing to it. She could feel something being woven through it, and it felt somehow larger, fuller. What she didn't feel was any kind of tool other than the brush, no curling irons or pins, no hair spray or gel of any sort. When the woman pulled a section of hair away from the others, it simply did as she wanted it to do, until the only weight she could feel was the ornamentation within it.

She flinched violently when a second pair of hands came to her face, unnerved even further by the variety of chuckles that whispered at her from around the room. She was sure she hadn't heard the door, and was equally sure that there'd been no one in the room before she and the hostess entered, but now she was very certain that there were more people there. She hated not being able to see, and the fact that her blindness was of her own volition- though not idea- only made it worse somehow. But she sat still and allowed the cosmetics to be painted on her. They seemed to be using a light touch, but she wouldn't know until she was allowed to open her eyes.

The strains of music floating up from the party seemed vaguely familiar, and she strained to try and decipher the haunting chords. Her mind had almost touched upon it when Jareth's voice in the doorway scattered all of her thoughts. "Yes, that will be perfect," he announced. "Don't you think so, Sarah?"

"I have no idea," she replied dryly. "I've had my eyes closed this entire time."

"Then open them."

She did so slowly, finding the room empty but for the two of them, and spared a moment to try and figure out when the others could have left. She raised a hand to her hair, feeling it tumbling down her shoulders, and felt a delicate metal band of vines and leaves, metallic ribbons woven through the gaps. It pulled the hair back from her face but she could still sense it about her. She half-turned toward the door to make comment when she stopped dead, two souvenirs from her nightmares standing right before her.

Jareth leaned comfortably against the door frame, his dark eyes heavily made up in fierce makeup that highlighted the savage beauty of his face. Lace spilled from his collar and cuffs, a royal blue jacket immaculately tailored to his lean frame before falling back to graceful tales. Long legs were sheathed in black velvet tights and polished black knee high boots, black leather gloves hiding his hands from view within the falls of white lace. He arched an eyebrow at her, daring her to make comment at the vision of the Goblin King, stepped out of her stories and assignments. There was just enough off, the slightest change in the makeup and hair, the newer fashioned crafting of the boots, to render anything she said hysterical and refutable.

Between them stood a mannequin with a lovely pink tissue dress, a heavy silver necklace draped about its canvas throat. With full skirts that whispered with each lazy revolution of the ceiling fan and large, puffy sleeves, it was a dress fit for any princess in a fairy tale. She stared at it, the blood draining from her face to leave an unhealthy pallor.

"Aren't you going to get dressed?" he asked innocently.

"This is going too far," she whispered, her hands trembling as she fought not to rip the ornaments from her hair. "We don't talk about it, we let it lie."

"Sarah?"

"Don't pretend with me, not like this." Her grey-green eyes were huge as she turned back to him, dark and depthless against the stark whiteness of her face. The softly glittering eye shadow did nothing to diminish the impression that they'd somehow grown larger. Eyes were the windows to the soul, it was said, but hers could reveal nothing other than sheer terror.

He frowned slightly, pushing off the frame to stand straight and tall before her. He had thought to make her off balance, render her more susceptible to certain suggestions he might make later on in the evening, but terror…that he hadn't expected. "Sarah…"

"I'm not going out there in that."

"There isn't any other costume," he told her evenly, waiting to see how the charade would play out. "If I'd had any idea-"

She laughed mirthlessly. "Oh, you had every idea. I want to go home. I want to go home now."

"If you're going to act as a child-"

She flinched back as if she had been struck, her eyes focusing on him as if only just now seeing him. Perhaps, in a way, she was. "A child?" she echoed, some hidden emotion lurking in her voice. "Yes, child, let's say that, because then I wouldn't be here in the first place. I can wish it away like it never happened, remember it only as an odd dream. Yes, let's say a child, because it will make everything so much easier."

His frown deepened into a true scowl and he impatiently brushed the spiky fall of hair from his eyes. "You consented to come to this party, Sarah, and I will not be made to look like a fool because you disapprove of your dress. Put it on."

"No. I want to leave."

"The only way you are leaving is in that dress."

Without thinking, she grabbed the chair she had been sitting on and hurled it against the wall. They both stared at the tinkling crash of the window, the chair hovering half in and half out of the broken glass. With Jareth's attention occupied, she ran quickly past him and down the stairs. She knew he could catch her if he really wanted to, she wasn't much of a runner, but she couldn't stay there. She raced out into the night, running down the side of the one way road until she came to a bus stop. It was dangerous to stop, but the posted schedule under the streetlight said she had only a minute to wait, and perhaps he'd delayed long enough to give her that head start, at least.

She received more than a few looks from the handful of people on the bus, but she wearily flashed her USF id for her free pass and claimed a seat near the back. While the bus trundled through the city, meandering back towards the university, she pretended not to notice the white owl flying effortlessly behind the window.

She pretended not to notice it sitting on the rail outside her apartment door, ignored it looking in through her glass door on her balcony. Closing the door to the tiny bathroom, she stripped mechanically and roughly pulled out the silver band, hurling it to the floor. She turned the water as hot as it would go and stood underneath it, letting the spray pound her into oblivion. She couldn't think about it, couldn't even pretend that it had happened.

When the tears came, she didn't acknowledge them, but she couldn't stop them. Hugging her arms tightly about herself, she stayed under the water long after all the heat had run out, shivering in the frigid spray.

_His voice kept hammering at her in the darkness, flying from every direction until there was no safety to be found in silence. "Why, whatever is the matter? Don't you like the __accommodations__ I've provided for you?"_

_"Please," she whispered, voice hoarse with pain and exhaustion. "Please let me out. Please let me go home."_

_"You are home," came the harsh reply. "You are mine now, to do with as I please. And it pleases me to see you here, in this dank, dark oubliette."_

_She thought of screaming, a long, endless scream that would carry with it all of her fear, her anger, her desperation, but she didn't. She laughed. It was a helpless fall of sound edging past the border of lucidity, creeping into comforting madness, trickling up and down her spine like spiders' legs and leavings a trail of __goose bumps__ in their wake. She buried her face in her jeans and laughed, feeling his eyes boring into her through the darkness._


	6. On the Clear Understanding

**Disclaimer: Per the usual, none of this actually belongs to me. I just borrow it to play with it, and earn no money from it.**

_A/N: What happened, did I piss off all of my loyal reviewers? I'M SORRY!!! I have the rest of the chapters outlined, and aren't you proud of me? I'm giving you another one so soon! There won't be any more uber long delays, just the normal ones. So please review? Pretty please? Pretty please with a cherry on top? I'm not above begging, as you can clearly see_

_A/N2: Some canon monkeys will probably get irritated at me for including a rather large anachronism in here. The book _The Thirteenth Tale_ is a very recent publication, so obviously it wouldn't have been included in Sarah's curriculum in 1994, but I put it anyway. It's an amazing book by Diane Setterfield and I strongly recommend it to anyone who loves deciphering the nature of a story and of identity_

_A/N3: Last one, I promise. You may have noticed that the rating has changed to M; the chapters are getting a little darker, so I decided to adjust accordingly. It's probably still on a T level, but it won't be staying that way for much longer._

**Chapter Six: Clear Understanding**

_Pomegranate Seeds_

_By Sarah Williams_

_She'd come so far, so much farther than she'd thought she could, yet felt like she may as well never __have__ stepped away from that strange clock. She hadn't meant to wish her infant daughter __away;__ she'd just been so scared! Even after arriving here, her first thought had been that the child might be better off here in the Underground, but then she'd seen those terrifying goblins and changed her mind._

_She'd come so far, through oubliettes and groping hands, though mazes and monsters, through wild creatures and fighting, only to be stopped now by an empty room._

_There were so many impossible staircases, leading up and down and sideways. She couldn't see how some of them were even usable, handing upside down like that and stopping in thin air. In the __past__ twelve hours, Paisley Adams had come a long __way__ from the frightened seventeen year old stuffing her baby into the trash can at her high school bathroom, but she just didn't know where to go from here. _

_She saw a flash of a cloak, the hint of a voice echoing back __against__ nothing. "Hello?" she called, hearing her words get swallowed by the heavy air. "Who's there?"_

_Another swirl of dark cloak, on an opposite staircase, and the shaggy, feathery hair of the Goblin King, the one who had taken her daughter. "Where is my baby?"_

_"How you turned my world, you precious thing," the voice __sang__, coming from behind her now. She whirled around, expecting to see him there, and was met with only empty space. "You starve and near exhaust me."_

_She started following as best she could, racing across the right-side up stairways. He always stayed firmly out of reach, never where she expected him to be, his words mocking and hurtful. _

_"Everything I've done, I've done for you."_

_For her? If he had her best interests at heart, why didn't he just give her daughter back? Why make her play these games, suffer through these trials. Raising her baby on her own was going to be enough of a punishment, wasn't it? Enough of a hardship?_

_"I move the stars for no one."_

_She was getting tired, but every flutter of the cloak, every caress of his voice caused an answering flutter within her. No Virgin Mary she, she knew what that flutter was, knew what it betokened, and her cheeks grew flushed with more than just the exercise. His voice rippled straight through her, playing chords she didn't realize she recognized. Perhaps she didn't, and she only thought she did because they should have seemed so familiar._

_Her legs trembling beneath her, she sank down onto one of the staircases attached to a wall, resting her back against the cold stone. A crystal bounced up the stairs to her, resting in her outstretched hand. She was almost afraid to look, she knew she didn't have a lot of time left, but she'd given birth only thirteen hours before. She wasn't up to all this running around, but was desperately trying to save her baby. She reluctantly pulled it up to eye level and the crystal changed into a pomegranate, dark and perfect and oh so inviting. _

_She was starving, she realized suddenly. When had she last had anything to eat? Or drink? She closed her eyes and bit into the smooth surface, feeling the juice squelch onto her face. Then, suddenly, he was there, right there before her, his dark eyes locked on hers with a terrifying intensity as soon as she opened them. He flicked away a drop of juice trickling down her chin. _

_"Though I do believe in you," he sang softly, his face hovering even closer to hers. Her eyes fluttered closed again and she felt his lips on hers, his tongue questing inside her mouth and sharing the hard seeds between them. __She shuddered and then he was gone, standing on a staircase on the opposite side of the room. __The only sign that she hadn't dreamed it was the slight stain on his thin lips from the juice._

_"I can't live within you."_

_Paisley dropped the pomegranate and pushed herself to her feet, more determined than ever to __rescue__ her daughter and get the hell out of there. There were support groups she could find, shelters for teenage mothers, she could find one of them. She wouldn't have to rely on her parents, who would just make her give the baby up, not that they'd ever noticed she was pregnant. She could do this. _

_She saw her darling baby girl wrapped in a blanket and lying on a step just out of range for her to jump to it. She hadn't even named her yet. __Taking a deep breath, Paisley ran and jumped off the ledge, hands outstretched towards her child._

_The world started falling up around her, the staircases breaking __apart with__ deathly moans and ominous creaks. She couldn't be sure if she was floating or falling, and when her feet touched a smooth stone surface, she almost thought it had come up to meet her._

_The Goblin King stood before her, dressed all in white with a long, feather-trimmed cloak hanging from him shoulders. Amidst the pale, dramatic finery, his eyes stood out more than ever, framed by the strong make-up and winging brows. _

_"Give me the child," she demanded bravely._

_"Is that all you have to say to me?" he asked her, voice confident and arrogant._

_She frowned, trying to remember the rest of the story. It had been for her English class, so she hadn't paid much attention to it. The words came out in a slow murmur. "Through dangers untold and hardships unnumbered, I have fought my way here to the castle beyond the Goblin City to take back the child you have stolen from me. For my will is as strong as yours, and my kingdom as great…you have no power over me."_

_A triumphant grin spread over her face, faltering when his amused expression didn't change in the slightest. __"That's where you're wrong, little girl," he told her with a laugh. __A crystal appeared in his hand, rolling over his gloved knuckles, to show her the kiss in the stairway. "When you have partaken of faerie food, when you have shared a meal with a fae, you give them power over you."_

_"But-"_

_"Ah, ah, ah, no buts," he chided, a second crystal joining the first. "Your baby girl stays mine forever."_

_"And what about me?"_

_"You? Oh, I haven't a need for you in my Labyrinth." She winced at his cruel words, but he wasn't done yet. "You I'll send back Aboveground, and you'll remember the baby you failed."_

_"But I fought for her!" she cried, starting to sob. "Please, let me have my baby!"_

_The world shifted around her and suddenly she was back in the bloody bathroom stall, but her baby was gone. Her sobs wracked harder, but she'd never be able to tell anyone why she was crying. They wouldn't believe her._

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Miss Williams? May I speak to you in my office after class please?"

Sarah looked up at Professor Peables and nodded, a slight frown creasing between her eyes.

Arthur waited patiently for the rest of the class to file in and began the day's lecture, but his mind was still on his favorite student. He couldn't find the words to describe how she had changed, nothing he came up with seemed to offer the full extent. She'd lost weight, that he could see, the fine bone of her face stark against her skin. She had an unhealthy pallor to her, as if she'd spent too long indoors, yet there was more to it than that. It was her eyes that were frightening. Her grey-green eyes, which usually lit with laughter or a spark of carefully contained mischief, were dull and dark, haunted by shadows that went unrelieved by company or light. She responded to what went on around her, but she didn't really participate. She stood just outside of whatever conversation she was in, words coming out of her mouth in answer to a stimulus, but nothing affected her.

He'd been growing increasingly worried purely off of the visual signs offered to him, but her writing pieces were only adding to the alarm. They were dark and dismal, full of uneven power and manipulation. Often, the power structure stopped just short of abuse. Where before some of her vignettes had included harmless, funny little pieces about the denizens of the Underground, now they were all centered on the hopeless game between the fierce, furious Goblin King and the hapless victims of his magic.

Was Jareth FitzRoy doing this to her? Arthur liked to consider the man a friend, but he'd be damned if he'd allow anyone to hurt such a talented and promising young woman like Sarah. He occasionally saw the two of them together on campus, though not in the two weeks that had passed since Halloween. In the beginning of their relationship, they'd usually been laughing over her stories and drawings or arguing obscure points of mythology or folklore; over the weeks it had changed to a menacing kind of quiet. Their words were soft, full of caution rather than laughter, and the teasing games walked carefully around the edges of old wounds he couldn't understand.

He ended class twenty minutes early, his distraction getting the better of him, and the look on his face drove away all of the brown-nosers before they could even suggest wasting his time. He ushered Sarah to his office and dropped the stack of papers carelessly on his desk, closing the door to give them some privacy.

Sarah looked up sharply at that; Professor Peables never closed his door when he was alone with a student, especially not a female student. He said it never helped to encourage gossip. Her eyes followed him through the tiny room as came back around the desk and sank down into his padded chair.

"Sarah, are you all right?"

She blinked, searching for a safe answer. "I'm fine, sir. Just a little tired, but the clinic said I didn't have anything. They even did blood work and everything."

"Do you trust me?"

"I wouldn't be in a closed office with you if I didn't."

"Is Jareth hurting you?"

Sarah honestly didn't know how to answer that question, not without bringing four years of questions and doubts along with it. She stared at the grain of the desk, deciphering the pattern of knots and whorls while she thought. "He's moving faster than I feel comfortable with," she said finally, "but we're finding a middle ground. I think he forgets that this is all very new to me."

Except it wasn't new, wasn't new at all. She'd been having the same dreams for five years and they had never gone away, never paused. She'd hidden them from her father and step-mother until she'd gone off for school, so why wasn't she better at hiding them now? _Because HE wasn't physically there_, a traitorous voice in her mind whispered, and she ignored it as skirting too close to that unspoken commandment.

"Your most recent pieces…"

"They're just stories, sir," she laughed, mustering up a smile that almost seemed real. "They don't mean anything."

"Why is it that I don't believe you?" he murmured, leaning back in his chair.

She recognized the concern in his fleshy face and was unexpectedly touched. She could see that this man genuinely cared for her well-being, but she didn't know how to tell him that the choices were flying from her hands.

"Sarah, the villain can't suddenly become the romantic lead. They can't become the hero. This isn't a fairy tale."

Her laugh was real at that. Soft, rueful, perhaps even a touch pained, but at least real. "I wouldn't ever want my life to be a fairy tale, sir," she told him truthfully. "I tried that once, and I really didn't like where it led me. Fairy tales have a way of turning out not so happily ever after."

"Do you see a happily ever after for yourself?"

"I don't know what I see, sir. Right now I'm just trying not to open my eyes."

His phone rang, keeping him from commenting, and she gave him a soft goodbye as she left the room. He had hoped that the conversation would reveal something- anything- to set his mind at ease, but now he was more resolved than ever to watch her more carefully. He finished the phone call as quickly as he could and pulled her newest piece towards him. He kept a file with a copy of everything she wrote, tracking the roller coaster of emotions she had been portraying recently. Their last exercise had been one where they pulled two words out of a hat, and their story had to revolve around those two themes. Sarah's had been mercy and betrayal, and he wanted to see where she had taken them.

_How Spring Came to the Labyrinth_

_By Sarah Williams_

_Snowfall sat up high on one of the large wooden support __beams__ that held the roof onto the circular tower, her wings fluttering aimlessly to create stirs of glitter in the air behind her. She was her favored size, six inches tall, and lost within the shadows. There were no windows in this tiny tower room, nor even chinks in the mortar or shingles where a single enterprising fairy might be able to worm her way out. But that was __all right__; she wasn't going to try to escape. That would have defeated the entire purpose. _

_It had been three years since Snowfall came to the Labyrinth and the Goblin City from the Seelie Court. The impurity of her blood, never mind how far back the impurity had been introduced, made her an object of ridicule there, and she had grown to hate the glamorous world of wealth and __privilege__, grown to despite the incandescent beauty of everything she saw, because it only served to conceal the rotting corruption at the heart of the Fae world. She had known that her impurity would make her, if not welcome, at least accepted within the Goblin City. She hadn't liked it much better, but that she liked it better in any measure made her decide to stay. The faeries here were nothing like the clans she had grown up with, where all was sweetness and laughter and light for as long as the daylight held. _

_Snowfall had been born in the far northern reaches of the Elves' forests, where icicles dripped off of firs and pines so big that the faeries had been able to create an entire city within the crystalline stalactites. They hollowed out cores and carefully froze snow in place to create bridges and walkways between the hanging homes. Their best artisans had carved out filigree patterns into the rails, snowflakes and dizzying geometric patterns that the youngest children, not yet grown into their wings, could play with under the careful eye of the nannies. They played with the shattered rainbows refracting through the ice, chasing them across the surface of the snow far below during the long day, sleeping whenever they grew tired and awaking to find it still say. Then came the long night, where they moved into the hollow trunk of the largest fir and slept all huddled together under blankets of woven thistledown and scattered __birds'__ feathers. _

_Oh, how she missed those beautiful, sparkling forests! She kicked at the tiny crystals sewn into the jagged hem of her sheer gown, but without light, they sparked no dance of rainbows. _

_She had become the mistress of the Goblin King not long after arriving in his city, not because she had wanted it, but because he did. She had grown fond of him, in her way, but she despised the impurity that such coupling possible. She hated being man-sized, hated how useless her wings were and how tiny everything else suddenly seemed. The world around her lost more and more of its wonder every time she had to make that shift to larger form. But, she had grown fond of him, even though she never knew the man she was sleeping with. Who was it each day, Jareth or the Goblin King? Where did one end and the other begin?_

_As his mistress, she had seen several young girls run through the labyrinth trying to reclaim their wished away children, seen then with real or feigned regret, and hated every second of those thirteen hours. She hated that those lost little children would be raised in the chaos and noise of the Goblin City. She knew they were well loved, those broken angels, but she wanted to give them what she had had, the austere splendor and laughter of the northern wastes. She had cheered when that one solitary mortal had bested the Labyrinth and its king, winning back her baby brother. She had longed for the day and there it was, never mind that it put Jareth in the foulest mood she'd ever seen. Someone had beaten the curse, the geis, that kept children living in such squalor. Children didn't belong in the Goblin City; human children __didn't belong anywhere in the Underground. Human children didn't suddenly become immortal, they continued to age as they normally would, for all that time passed differently than Aboveground. Those poor children seemed to die so quickly, to fade and wither and pass away. Only if they __married__ a member of a ruling Fae family could they be granted a form of immortality, but no mortal child would ever be granted that honor._

_Her wings fluttered faster, creating a breeze that tangled her silks around her shapely legs. _

_It had only been three years, but it felt like forever. Three years of hating who and what she was, of hating each and every touch on her skin because the hand felt so much smaller than it should have. She wanted to go home, and failing that, she just wanted to go elsewhere. She couldn't go home, though. She'd left without her family's blessing, infected with the insatiable curiosity that sometimes bloomed in young faeries of a certain age. She'd left with three others; Icewind, the one all the female faeries sighed over in their hammocks of __spider web__, had fallen prey to a very large and very hungry owl not two hours out from their city; Shadowmarch, whose night black hair and shifting grey eyes marked her as one of the families that had joined them many generations ago from the Mountain of Night and Sorrows, had stayed in the Seelie Court, reunited with distant clan members from the east, her pure blood assuring her a place that Snowfall could never have; and Snowrise, Snowfall's own older brother, was wandering still, or at least she hoped he was. She'd heard nothing from him since he'd left the Seelie Court. His disgust had been quicker to flare than hers, his temper reacting more painfully to the insults leveled against them. She had tried to find him when she left, but one small __faerie__ is very hard thing to find in a world as vast as the Underground._

_So that left going elsewhere, but one didn't simply walk away from being a king's mistress. Not unless that king was tired of you. Snowfall didn't see Jareth tiring of her anytime soon. He enjoyed the revulsion he saw in her eyes each time she grew to a size convenient for him, loved knowing that he could command of her the one thing she loathed above all else. It gave him power over her, as if being her king wasn't enough. _

_She had nearly given up on finding a way to trick him into letting her leave when a miraculous thing had intervened; a message, nothing more. Mizumi, Queen of Cups and Lady of the Waters of Moraine, had a gift for the Goblin King, but all her messengers were at other errands. Did he have anyone to spare that run this small task for her? Jareth had sent Snowfall on the assumption that whatever the gift was, she would be forced to take a larger size in order to bring it back. __How she would have traveling all the way from Moraine looking like a winged human!_

_ But in this way, Mizumi had outwitted him, with the slow patience of the woman that survives among powerful men. The gift was a tiny crystal phial, just over an inch tall, enchanted in such a way that no matter how much water was poured from it, it would never run dry. It was a trinket, an off the cuff remembrance, but Snowfall would be able to take it back without Shifting. It might be tiring, but she would be able to do it. _

_And she had so much more than a gift; she also had a promise. __Mizumi had long wanted the power of the Labyrinth for herself and her daughters, and if Snowfall would do one tiny thing for her, she would guarantee the faerie a home in the northern stretch of Moraine, where the frozen waterfalls created stunning ice palaces within the white marble cliffs. __Snowfall would have something to call her __own, a version of home, where perhaps even her brother could come, if he found her. Snowfall snatched at that promise and gave her word, the magic of the oath swirling around the two women in a wreath of water._

_She'd made good on her part of the deal, or rather, had attempted to. She'd washed her hands the special water from the phial, the thick liquid combining with the constant glitter that sloughed from her skin to create a protective barrier, more magically effective than gloves. Carefully, slowly, and frequently rewashing her hands in the liquid, she had ground iron flakes into a powder so fine even she could barely see it. Iron was a poison, utterly deadly to the fae, and even a touch of it would sap their powers so greatly they could barely walk. She made sure it got into his food that evening, then stretched to his size for what she prayed would be the last time, gowning and preparing and sitting at his side at the table._

_But what she had reckoned without was Jareth's keen senses. He'd no more than lifted the fork to his mouth before he knew what had been added. The investigation had been brief and brutal. Snowfall had admitted readily enough to her deed, omitting any mention of the Queen of Cups and refusing to explain how she had handled the bare iron. _

_She'd been locked in this tower room ever since, grudgingly permitted to change into her normal gown only because Jareth had left no orders for her to remain full-sized. She wasn't sure how much time had passed; it could have been hours, it could have been days. It wasn't an oubliette but it might as well have been. In the oubliette, however, there were ways out, if you knew them. The only way for Snowfall to leave was through the door that was locked, bolted, and securely guarded._

_She didn't mind, though. The solitude was peaceful, and she knew that even if things didn't fall out exactly the way she wanted, she was still getting the essentials of her goal; she would no longer be mistress to the Goblin King. As much as he might like to punish her that way, he couldn't retain a mistress that had publicly tried to kill him; it would be an open invitation to more assassination attempts, and as unpalatable as his kingdom and duties were, there were always those fools who saw only the power and not the geis that went with it._

_The door opened, a single candle flickering with a flame that ignited the __spiraling__ stream of glitter in the air around her. "Come down here, Snowfall," Jareth said, yet there was a reluctance that made it not quite an order. "I would like to speak to you, please."_

_She fluttered down obediently, landing on his outstretched left hand. The candlelight __illuminated__ her curves beneath the sheer silk, her snow white hair moving in lazy eddies about her beautiful face. "Please isn't something I would have expected from you, especially not now."_

_"Why didn't you say anything to me?"_

_She saw the genuine confusion in his face, in his eyes, and wondered why she had never seen it there before. "Because you wouldn't have listened."_

_"You don't know that."_

_"Neither do you." She walked carefully over the folds of lace at his wrists and up the dark blue coat, skirting around the crystals that sparkled against the indigo like stars in the night sky. She kept __walking until she could sit high up on his shoulder, leaning against the stiff standing collar. "You enjoy causing pain."_

_"Small pains, yes, but if you had told me you were truly unhappy, I would have let you go."_

_"Would you?"_

_Jareth, king of the Goblins, sat down on the bare floor of the tower room, his back against the poorly constructed wall. He was fastidious, but he didn't even seem to notice the years of accumulated dirt leaping to his fine court clothing. "I may get a thrill of seducing the originally unwilling, but I have never __resorted__ to rape, Snowfall. You should have spoken to me."_

_"Like you've spoken to the human girl who stole your heart."_

_He winced, and she almost felt guilty for taking such a cheap shot. _

_"It was more than wanting to leave," she admitted. __"I wanted to leave, but I needed a place to go. __I wanted something that could be home."_

_"I could have found you something."_

_"Not within your domain."_

_"Am I truly your nightmare, Snowfall?"_

_She rose off his shoulder with a quick flutter of her wings, hovering before his face. She reached out with one tiny hand and caressed his lower lip, feeling his eyes on her. "No. But you're not my dream, either."_

_"It seems I am only a nightmare or a nonentity, then," he chuckled quietly. _

_"This isn't like you."_

_"Perhaps it's because you're right." He caught her gently around the legs and set her on his knee, where they could see each other face to face, or nearly. "I enjoy inflicting pain, but I have no way to understand the pain that others inflict on me."_

_"Perhaps if you listened to Nurse more…" she suggested archly, and she saw the barest twitch of a smile before he groaned. _

_"I think you females all have a conspiracy."_

_She thought of Mizumi and couldn't return the smile._

_"I should have you executed, you know," he continued solemnly. "High treason, attempted assassination…I can't let these things pass lightly."_

_"I know."_

_"I don't know if I'm being merciful by this or not," he sighed. She merely looked at him dispassionately. "You're to make yourself full size, Snowfall. Your wings will be removed, to be __saved__ for someone more worthy of them. Then you will be fitted with iron cuffs and anklets and left in the dumps, there to live out your days."_

_Neither commented on the stark truth that those days wouldn't number many. Faeries could survive without their wings, but only half made it through that first hellish day. Their magic was in their wings, their pride and image. A faerie without wings was like a child without laughter. The shock to her system would only compound with the poisonous touch of the iron; in all likelihood, she'd be dead within a few days._

_Yet, it was mercy in a way. She __wasn't__ going home, but she would no longer be forced to live as someone she hated. She wasn't going to argue with his sentence; his advisors had probably argued that he was being too merciful as it was. It wasn't the full public execution they would have wanted for her betrayal of their sovereign, it wasn't the lesson in obedience and duty they would have taken the __opportunity__ to teach. _

_"May I ask one thing of you?" she said softly, and he nodded cautiously. "When I'm dead, please take me home. Make me my correct size and take my body home to my family. I don't want to fade away to nothing. I want to become part of the snow, like my ancestors before me."_

_"I promise," he whispered, and the candle flickered and died. They sat in silence in the darkness, wind teasing around them from the open door, and said their unspoken goodbyes._

Arthur set down the staples pages and whistled lowly. It was dark, there was no question, but once again she was showing him an entirely different side of the enigmatic Goblin King. And, perhaps, she was trying to alleviate his own concerns over Jareth. It didn't provide him with any of the answers he sought, only supplied more questions, but at least he knew that whatever else was happening, Sarah understood the complexity of her situation. For now, that would have to be enough.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sarah zipped up her backpack and locked the door on her way out, racing down the stairs to the parking lot. It was the weekend after her conversation with Professor Peables, and he had invited her and several of his other preferred students to a picnic at the house of one of the members of the Board of Governors. Many professors were invited, he'd explained to her, and they were each allowed to bring a certain number of promising students. It wasn't an official university event, merely a get together of people who all happened to be associated with the school, but that small technicality meant that there was more freedom to the event itself.

She slid into the backseat of his SUV and greeted his wife fondly, nodding a hello to the other students in the back with her. Their host lived outside of town and the professor had suggested carpooling not only to make it easier to find it, but to make parking less of a hassle when they got there. The conversation was animated on the drive, focused on a book they'd all read during the week.

Arthur was pleased to see Sarah participating fully, her eyes sparkling with enjoyment as she debated with Geoffrey over the virtues of truth versus story. He shared a smile with his wife, in whom he'd confided his concern, and she squeezed his knee affectionately while he drove.

Sarah had been greatly affected by the book, and she wasn't sure if it was for the better. But then, the very question of for the better was part of its essence, wasn't it? The truth was scary and frightening, and entirely lacked the ability to comfort. People didn't ask for the truth because they wanted to hear it, but because they felt they needed to hear it. What they wanted was a story, something soft and tame to snuggle up to on the cold, rainy nights, when nightmares wanted to walk so freely. Story could contain, could calm, could recreate; the truth could only ever just be.

Did she need to know the truth, she had wondered. Couldn't she cling to the story, just see how comforting it could be. She could answer every question with a story, something designed to entice and inspire; she could be like Vida Winters, and write endless stories because the truth created ghosts too hard to bear. She didn't have to exist in truth; she could exist in story, and feel the better for it.

With that thought, she'd finally slept without dreaming.

There were already a lot of cars parked on the side of the road before the long drive, and Arthur groaned. "Oh, we're going to have to carry all this food all the way up there!"

His wife popped him on the back of the head, grinning at the three students. "The exercise will be good for you, now fetch, doggy, fetch."

Geoffrey, Sarah, and David all laughed and gathered up bags of chips and two liters of soda to give as offering to the party gods.

It wasn't really a party, Sarah mused somewhat later, which was perhaps why she was much more comfortable than usual. It really was just a big picnic, with huge blankets spread out across the grass. You could plant yourself on one blanket and stay there, which was what she'd done, or float from blanket to blanket like a bee in a poppy field, which was what Arthur was doing. She smiled slightly and leaned back to let her face soak in the sun. It was mid-November, but the Florida sun still shone bright, and she needed little more than long sleeves with her jeans to keep her warm.

"Now there is an image I would like to capture."

She opened her eyes to see Jareth standing directly above her, blocking the sun, an alien expression of yearning on his face. "Hello."

"May I sit?"

She sat up and glanced around; her blanket was empty for the moment. Geoffrey had been sitting there, but he'd gone to refill his drink, leaving her with a moment of silence. "If you wish."

He collapsed gracefully down next to her, his bones folding in like they didn't exist. She could only envy such grace; she'd always been several shades of clumsy. His eyes, almost grey-blue today, searched her face, though for what she wasn't sure. "Are you still running away from me?"

"No," she answered honestly enough. She wasn't running away from him, she was running away from the truth; it was only when he pulled her too close to the truth that she struggled.

He opened his mouth to say something when four people joined their blanket. Jareth greeted Arthur and Laura, whom he'd suspected had joined them on purpose, while Sarah exchanged hellos with two of the students in her Life Drawing class. One of them held out a plain white box, like a cereal box, that had a Chinese character emblazoned in red on the both sides.

"Fortune cookies," she told them, shaking the box at them. "Go on, take one! And don't forget to eat the cookie first, or your fortune won't come true."

Laughing, they all grabbed one at random from the box, and for the next few minutes, all that could be heard over the distant murmur of other conversations were the crinkling of plastic and the sharp crunch of almond cookies being chewed.

Arthur was the first to finish, straining to see the tiny blue lettering of his fortune. "Take a breath where you are before you start to run," he announced after a minute.

His wife laughed at hers, rolling it into a ball and tossing it at him. "You planted that one for me, I know it!"

"What does it say, Mrs. Peables?" asked James, the boy from the drawing class.

"Be cautious in your spending, money may be tight."

"Yes, even Fate itself is telling you not to get your hair cut at that snooty salon each month."

James snickered and unrolled his, reading it out slowly. "To a wise man, health is happiness."

"Well, that's rather boring, isn't it?" sniffed his classmate. She unrolled her and sighed. "Not that mine is much better. 'Don't look to the many, but only to yourself'. Blech."

As Sarah was still munching on her cookie, Jareth went next, the thin scrap of paper held between his elegant fingers. "Well, this is a proper word maze, isn't it?"

"Are you going to share it with us, Jareth?"

His eyes gleamed as he looked across at Arthur; oh yes, he'd come to keep an eye on him. Then his gaze traveled back to the thoughtful girl beside him. "The way forward is sometimes the way back."

It should have frightened her, at least made her stiffen, but curiously, it didn't. It was truth, and she didn't have to accept the truth. She could still embrace the comforting story. She swallowed the last bit of almond cookie and slowly smoothed out her fortune. "It's nice to be remembered, but far cheaper to be forgotten."

It might have been her imagination, but she almost thought she head Jareth sigh.

"Hey, Sarah!" Geoffrey yelled from several blankets away. "Come see this hedge maze! It's amazing!"

She almost said no, but then she remembered the story. It was there, waiting patiently just beyond the range of words, to give her whatever comfort she might need. Jareth saw her movement and stood in one fluid motion, helping to her feet. "A hedge maze? How very curious," he murmured.

She smiled at Professor Peables to let him know it was all right.

It was indeed a hedge maze, a solid construction of bushes and brambles that stood up stiffly and repelled any attempt to cut through their walls. Sarah, Jareth, and Geoffrey paced around the outer edges of it, joined by other curious guests.

"A prize to the first to the center," their host's husband called out. "Prize to be determined by the winner!"

With an enthusiastic cheer, several of the students barreled in through the one entrance.

"Well?" Jareth asked, one winged eyebrow arching severely. "Are you going in?"

She nodded slowly, surprising him, and a small smile spread across her lips at his expression. "It doesn't look that hard."

"It's harder than you think."

"It's a piece of cake." With that, she turned away from him and ran into the maze, hearing his soft laughter behind her. She wasn't trying to find the center, not really. Whenever she heard her fellow students coming towards her, she rounded a corner to escape them, keeping to the quiet alleys. The tall hedges partially blocked the sun, shifting shadows stretching out across the grass the formed the walkways. It felt larger than it was, and soon she couldn't hear anything at all, not the students laughing at their dead ends, not the distant conversations of the other guests, not even the birdsong that had been so prevalent just moments before. She could feel him somewhere behind him, unhurried, always knowing exactly where she was.

A large, round crystal fell out of one of the hedges and landed on the path before her, rolling along after her when she passed by it. It overtook her easily, leading her around certain corners and letting others go by. Then she was in the center, and Jareth was behind her, and the crystal disappeared.

"According to our host, you get to choose your prize," he told her, his eyes glinting with some hidden emotion.

"I think he was talking about a different center," she muttered, but she still smiled at the comforting presence of the story.

Jareth reached out and smoothed away a lock of gleaming brown hair that had fallen into her face during their run, tucking it gently back behind her ear. His fingers lingered on her cheek, her jaw, tracing lightly across her lips. "Are you going to send me away again?" he asked her softly, barely audible even standing so close.

"I don't know," she answered, her voice equally soft.

He kissed her tenderly, an intimacy that was almost more frightening than passion. Her lips, her forehead, her cheeks, her eyes, her nose, her chin, and back to her lips again, he covered her in frantic affection, her back pressing into the scratchy stiffness of the hedge. "Please don't send me away," he pleaded against her skin.

She opened for him, unable to bear the aching vulnerability he was showing her. She knew he was a complicated person, but the fun house only had so many mirrors, and only so many of those were even the true image. How much of this openness, of this genuine need, was story? Her arms wrapped tightly about him and he groaned, his entire body shifting against her. He wasn't pushing, not this time, but he just needed to feel her against him.

Somewhere beyond their ring of hedge, a small music box played quietly, its song tinkling out in single, tinny notes as the fairy tale princess twirled alone in place.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

_Shall We Dance?_

_By Sarah Williams_

_The flavor of peach still redolent on her tongue, the girl looked around her, feeling an unaccustomed weight on her head. She looked down at herself and smiled broadly. How gorgeous she looked! She was in a dress that would have fit in any fairy tale she'd ever been told, a frothy lavender covered in crystals and lace. A gold lacework diadem held her curly red hair back from her face, a matching necklace resting heavily around her neck. _

_She was in a room as unfamiliar as any she'd passed through since beginning the run of the Labyrinth, but at least this one had some kind of refinement. A white marble staircase dominated the room, and there were people dancing along it as though it were an even surface. How gloriously they were dressed, in the finest fabrics, with fascinating masks concealing their features. She wished fleetingly for a mask of her own, disliking the naked feeling it gave her to be the only one without one. _

_Across the room, she saw a tall man with a mask held to his face by a clawed handle. He let it fall away, revealing sharp features even more refined by make-up. She'd begun to notice the boys at school, which was actually why she'd wished her brother away in the first place. She didn't want to be stuck babysitting him when she could be out with the cute older boys from the senior class. But, she could only imagine what would happen if her mom came home and found out she'd wished her brother to the goblins; grounded wouldn't even begin to cover it. She really wasn't into boys who wore make-up, but then, most of them were swinging for the other team anyway. But damn, whoever this was made it look HOT!_

_He came towards her through the press of people, despite the many women inviting him to dance, and opened his arms to her. Stunned, she accepted the offer, and slowly twirled with him to the music. It wasn't anything she was familiar with, and she didn't know how to dance in this slow, __classical__ manner, __but his hand at the small of her back led her in whichever direction he wanted her to go, and her voluminous skirts hid the mistakes and fumbles that her feet were making. As they danced, she closed her eyes and rested her head against his shoulder, breathing in his foreign, spicy scent. Somewhere she could hear a strange tock, almost a knock, that didn't fit into the music, but she ignored it, swept away in the glamour and romance of this strange ball._

_Then the tock turned into a chime, then two, and she heard thirteen notes all in a row. The party-goers screamed with laughter as the magical bubble shattered and they all fell away, until there was only him and her in an empty space. She looked around, half-expecting everyone to emerge again. "What happened?"_

_"Your thirteen hours passed," he told her cuttingly. "You failed my labyrinth, and now your baby brother will become one of us."_

_"But you don't understand!" she gasped. "I need him back! My mother will kill me when she gets home!"_

_"That is, of course, between you and your mother." He waved dismissively and she was back in her normal clothes, standing beside her brother's bed. His mocking voice brushed around her form the empty air. "But the boy is mine."_

_When he returned to his rooms after changing and setting the Labyrinth to rights, he found the boy huddled in Nurse's arms, sobbing. The ancient creature hugged him tightly and rocked him, murmuring nonsense sounds into his messy orange hair. __Jareth looked his question at his caretaker and she smiled sadly at him over the boy's head._

_"Why are you crying, Samuel?" he asked softly, kneeling down beside boy and Nurse._

_"My s-s-sister," he wept, his entire body shaking with the force of his grief. "S-s-she's gone, and s-s-she didn't even f-fight for me!"_

_Jareth knew there were many times when the truth was the only cure, the only balm, but he also knew that there were times when only story could heal the hole in a breaking heart, so he gathered the six year old close in his arms and rocked him just as Nurse had. "She did fight for you, Samuel," he lied. "Sometimes, though, no matter how hard you fight, it just isn't enough."_

_Nurse nodded in silent agreement, but he knew her mind was on a different girl, one who __had__ fought hard enough, and not on the __flighty__ piece of filth that had danced away her brother's chances of ever seeing his mother again. _

_"Mara fought for you, my dear boy, but now it's up to me to fight for you."_

_"Up-p to you?" the child sniffled, wiping his nose on his sleeve._

_Nodding solemnly, Jareth __produced a__ handkerchief and wiped Samuel's face with it, vanishing it a moment later. "I know you're going to miss your mother, Samuel, but you'll have a new mother and father who take very good care of you, and you'll have siblings who play with you, and friends who __come__ from all the way across the city just to see you. You'll like that, won't you?"_

_"Why didn't she fight harder for me?"_

_Jareth didn't have an answer for that, so he just held the boy as the tears returned. Sometimes, no matter how hard you fought, it just wasn't enough, and sometimes there just weren't answers to the most important questions. _


	7. A Stitch in Time

**Disclaimer: The normal, you know, I own nothing, I am not worthy, yada yada yada.**

_A/N: And here we are again! Aren't I being so well behaved? Well, mostly, anyway. As always, please review! You have no idea how much I love coming home from work (and starting now, school) and finding reviews waiting for me!_

_A/N2: A note to Midnight Lady: Yes, there are a few characters in there now from the manga (I love working in a bookstore!) but the plot will not be weaving through; this is about a very different set of circumstances. I just thought Mizumi was interesting, and I enjoy the chance to see more of the Underground than we're shown in the movie. _

**Chapter Seven: A Stitch in Time**

_The Cleaners Take a Holiday_

_By Sarah Williams_

_For longer than anyone could remember, the tunnel maze of __oubliettes__ under the Labyrinth had been tended by the Cleaners. They were rather small for goblins, but the nasty boring __machine__ they pedaled more than made up for their __diminutive__ size. The Cleaners were very proud of their work, __sweeping__ the tunnels free of humans and other vermin. They answered directly to the king himself, and their pride was in no way diminished by the simple fact that this was only because goblins had no concept of a delegatory system of government. _

_But one day, quite randomly and without any warning, the current generation of Cleaners decided to take a holiday. They didn't inform anyone of their decision, for it was quite beyond them to realize they should be expected to do so. They simply made the decision and considered the thought an admirable success in and of itself. __Moffit and Mimzy lodged their spiked cart securely in a wall, covered it with dirt, and promptly left it there._

_They watched with great interest as a crystal flew past them in the poorly lit tunnel. It was obviously summoning them to chase off some silly mortal who'd incurred the king's wrath, but they were on holiday. It wouldn't be much of a holiday if they started working, now would it?_

_A moment later, a young boy came cautiously around the corner, __peering__ at them through a mop of light brown hair. He wore white canvas trousers that came just past his knees and a loose white shirt with a blue striped sailor's collar. Both the clothes and the battered straw hat had clearly seen cleaner days._

_"Is lady?" Moffit asked curiously, scratching at his favorite pet louse as it bit him behind the ear. The creature certainly didn't look like the girls who routinely came through the labyrinth._

_"Of course I'm not a lady__," the child said crossly, puffing up with as much indignation as his ten year old self could muster. "I, sir, am a boy!"_

_"Boy is boy," Mimzy chattered, tugging on his wispy white moustache._

_"Child wisher-goner."_

_Richard, for that was the boy's name, took a few steps closer to them. "Can you help me find my sister?"_

_"Sister!" the goblins cried, clasping clawed hands and dancing around the boy. "Sistersistersister!"_

_"Me sister," announced Moffit importantly, pointing at his companion._

_"Is sister," agreed Mimzy, who was in fact male and not related in the slightest to Moffit. _

_"That is well," Richard told them slowly, "but can you assist me in finding _my_ sister? That king chap stole her away."_

_He felt mildly guilty about that; he hadn't truly meant to wish her away, just scare her enough that she would stop trying to play with him and his friends. _

_"Kingkingking," the goblins chanted happily, and shaking his head, Richard continued on what he hoped was his way. It was not, in fact, the proper way to be going about it, but he had no way of knowing that, and therefore continued on as blindly as any enterprising ten year old boy might in a labyrinth of wonder. _

_Their minds didn't linger very long on the little boy; their minds, such as they were, very rarely lingered for long on anything. For the first time in their lives, they stepped out of the tunnels before their thirteen hour shift was over, squinting at the bright sunlight._

_"Sky fires," oohed Mimzy, who was promptly smacked over the head by Moffit. Moffit, as the elder of them, had seen the sky at day before, though it had been a very long time. _

_"Sky burns," he corrected, and Mimzy accepted it graciously._

_"Sky burns."_

_The two intrepid Cleaners scuttled their way through the Labyrinth until they came to the forest, looking about them with wide eyes. Oh, the Cleaning they could do there! A bright orange creature landed very suddenly in front of them, standing on its hands with its head balanced in the arches of its feet. _

_"Do you want to play with us?"_

_"Play!" the goblins cried, dancing around the Firey. "Playplayplay!"_

_This got the rest of the Fireys very excited, and as__ a__ courtesy, they allowed their goblin guests to choose the game. This quite befuddled the two Cleaners, who had never played before, but they obligingly bent their heads together and whispered. An idea, quite an unaccustomed creation, began to spin slowly through their murky minds. Once, while reporting in to the king, they'd seen what he'd been watching in one of his scrying crystals. They hadn't really understood what they'd been seeing, not that they understood it any more clearly now, but it seemed worth a try. _

_Moving with the speed that served them well as Cleaners, they gathered up all the Fireys' eyes. Moffit scrambled up the wall and arranged them in a neat line across the top, joined a moment later by Mimzy, who'd gone searching for two perfect sticks. _

_"Hey, give those back!"_

_"You can't have those! They're not yours!"_

_"If you play with ours, we get to play with yours!"_

_"Get down here!"_

_They ignored the Fireys, industriously tying two flat rocks to the end of their sticks, just as they'd seen in the crystal._

_"Shouts," mused Moffit. "Shoutsted they did."_

_"Shouts," agreed Mimzy. Mimzy very rarely disagreed with anything Moffit had to say. _

_"Shoutsted what?"_

_Closing his large eyes, the younger goblin thought very hard, and found it very painful. "Twos?"he suggested carefully._

_Luckily, Moffit liked this answer, and he smiled broadly to reveal broken, blackened teeth. "Twos! Twoses it be!"_

_"Twos!" the yelled together, and they swung their sticks and rocks, each squarely hitting an eyeball and sending it flying far across the top of the forest. More furious protests arose from the Fireys below, but they merely laughed and lined up another eyeball each. What fun!_

_Unfortunately for the Cleaners, even the Wild Gang only had so many eyeballs to hit off the wall, and they soon found themselves without anything to play with. They dropped their sticks and rocks back to forest floor, not even noticing the young Firey th__a__t now lay unconscious under their clubs, and trudged off along the top of the wall. Their fun had been robbed from them too early, but they didn't know where to go to find more._

_But then the wall crumbled and led them back into the tunnel maze. They were mildly put out with this, but then decided to explore the sections that they as the Cleaners weren't responsible for. _

_"Beware!" __A deep voice bellowed out at them, and they screwed up their eyes and twisted their ears and gave very frightful faces in response. __"Well, there's certainly no call to behave like that," the stone face sniffed snootily._

_"Go back," one of his companions agreed firmly. "Go back!"_

_Moffit and Mimzy shared a long look, twin evil grins spreading across their muddy faces. A quick visit to the maintenance closet disguised to look like an exit from an oubliette, and they had what they __needed. Thirty minutes later, the bored goblins left the stone faces to be thoroughly disgusted at their endeavors and went of__f to find something more exciting_

_The Goblin King trailed through not long after them, wondering where they could have got to. The boy shouldn't have been able to escape the oubliette in the first place, but he certainly should not have been able to get past the Cleaners. Had something happened to them?_

_The fastidious Fae stopped short at the sight which greeted his eyes. All of the stone faces- all of them- were covered in paint, many of them in colors which had no names they were so hideous. A nose might be painted in one color, each eye in another, with stripes and dots and spirals that only made them clash further. He gaped soundlessly until one of the faces spotted him and started moaning even louder._

_"Your Majesty! This is intolerable!"_

_"How are we supposed to warn off the maze runners if we look like this?"_

_"Who could possibly be scared of us now?"_

_"You might be surprised," he muttered under his breath. Certainly he'd think twice before progressing if there was any chance of him looking like that. It didn't take much longer for him to find out that it had been his missing Cleaners who had done this deed, and his scowl turned thunderous. _

_Jareth stalked his reprobate Cleaners through the Labyrinth and the Goblin City, finding it surprisingly easy to track the absolute __havoc__ they wreaked. It was almost a point of pride, actually; they were standing out amidst the normal chaos of the city, something that very few managed to do. He finally caught up to them in the Escher room, where they __were __industriously greasing each and every step._

_Late that evening, while they were making up their hours, Mimzy looked over at Moffit and sighed. "Smells," he said flatly._

_And Moffit agreed. Each holding one hand over their noses, they went back to cleaning the bridge over the Bog of Eternal Stench. It would be the last time in many generations that a Cleaner ever took a holiday._

_--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------_

"See, Ashley, there's this thing called spell check."

The girl in question made a face and threw a pencil at Geoffrey. "It's also called a rough draft. I was in a hurry to print it out and get here."

Sarah smiled and ducked her head to hide it, her thick curtain of hair falling forward over her face. She and several other members of her writing class had gathered in the café at the Barnes and Noble on Dale Mabry to form a critique circle. It was just before Thanksgiving, and they should have been working frantically on the term papers for all of their other classes, but they also had a portfolio due for Professor Peables. It always seemed like everything was due the day before Thanksgiving, but that was- oh, wait, everything _was_ due the day before Thanksgiving.

Over the semester, they'd turned in small pieces with every class period, as well as in-class exercises several times a week. Their latest assignment was to choose ten of them and refine them into polished vignettes. Hence the writing circle; they could catch each other's small errors more easily than they could catch their own, and could also suggest points of style that may or may not have been approached in the original writing.

They'd been there for over an hour already, with plates of crumbs from cinnamon buns and scones and cups of cooling coffee or chocolate. Papers were carefully stacked out of immediate reach of the drinks; William, much to his chagrin, had lifted his cup to reveal a wide brown ring of coffee on what he had hoped was a final draft.

The group continued to argue amiably, but Sarah gradually grew aware of something else, just a feeling that someone outside their circle was paying her a great deal of attention. She purposefully dropped the vivid green pen she was using to mark notes and corrections, and when she bent over to get it, her eyes met Jareth's.

He was sitting several tables away, ostensibly grading tests. As evil as term papers just before the holiday was, he was one of those truly wicked professors who give a test on the last day of class before Thanksgiving. He nodded slightly, acknowledging that he'd been seen, but said nothing.

Sarah nodded slowly in return, forcing her attention back to her classmates. An hour later, they reluctantly disbanded to work on the papers for their other classes. Sarah had two ten page essays due, but they were at least already fully researched. That was a definite leg up on most of the others.

She packed away her notebook and pen, sliding her bag over one shoulder and walking over to stand next to Jareth's table. "I thought you did your grading over at Borders."

He looked up at her over the wireless rims of the slim reading glasses perched on his nose. "Usually, yes, but the view has grown somewhat boring of late. I heard things might be more attractive here tonight."

"You and your pretty words."

"Sarah, will you sit with me?"

Puzzled, she let her bag slide to the floor and sank down into the chair.

"I've been thinking on my behavior of late," he began, awkwardly clearing his throat. She was both fascinated and repelled by the thought that there was anything that could make this enigmatic man uncomfortable. "I'd like to apologize."

"Apol…"

"I've been pushing you too far too fast," he went on to explain. He took the glasses off his nose and folded them neatly into a black leather case. "I keep forgetting how innocent you are, and I shouldn't pressure you."

She wasn't sure what to say.

"To make up for my boorishness, I've brought you a gift."

"What is it?" she asked before she could stop herself, and she bit her lip to prepare herself for his answer.

But the answer she was trying not to expect didn't come. "Open it and see." He reached down into his leather satchel and pulled out a small box wrapped in plain, matte green paper.

Curious, Sarah delicately pulled apart the paper and lifted the lid of the unadorned white box. Resting against a piece of white fluff was a thin chain that looked suspiciously like platinum. It had a pendant as well, a complex maze knot with tiny faceted crystals scattered throughout. She lifted it out of the box and stared at it wonderingly.

"It once belonged to my mother," he told her quietly. "Her name was Lahatiel, and she died a very long time ago, when I was but a child. This pendant stood for protection, for devotion, and I would like to see you wear it."

She continued to stare at the necklace rather than him because it was safer. It wasn't a request but it wasn't quite an order either. Lahatiel…he'd never told her anything about his family, other than a few veiled remarks about his old nurse. Those remarks were rarely flattering, but told in such a way that they couldn't be anything but fond. His mother's necklace…protection and devotion…

There was going to have to come a time when the games stopped, when story fell away to reveal the cold, hard truth. But that time didn't have to be now.

"Put it on me?" she requested softly.

His dark eyes lit with some emotion she couldn't identify and he rose gracefully to his feet, standing behind her before she could blink. His long fingers brushed tenderly against the skin at the back of her neck as he expertly fastened the clasp. She wasn't used to wearing jewelry, and it felt unexpectedly heavy despite the light weight of the metal.

"Thank you."

Jareth knelt down before her, ignoring the curious looks of the other customers in the café, and took her hands in his. "I would hope, Sarah, that no matter what else occurs, you do understand that I am very fond of you."

Her throat went dry, her fingers trembling in his gasp. There were too many ways to take a statement like that, too many ways for story to run too close to the truth. She swallowed hard, finding her voice with an effort. It came out quieter than she would have liked, but it came out, which was more than she'd expected to accomplish. "I am…fond…of you as well."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

_The King is Dead, Long Live the King_

_ By Sarah Williams_

_They were all clustered about the bed, blocking the view of those standing further back in the room. __Jareth would have liked to have been one of those further back, but no- he stood just beside the head of the bed, seeing everything in grotesque, minute detail. He saw each labored rise and collapse of the narrow chest, each fleck of foam and spittle drooling from the corner of the slack lips, each fine tremor as the fatal palsy drew closer to the heart._

_The Goblin King was dying, and his Court was gathered to watch._

_Jareth stared dispassionately at his father, his face concealed beneath the expressionless mask he'd perfected a long time ago. What had the fool been thinking, to personally lead the goblins into battle against the trolls on their southern borders? Goblins were fighters, brawlers, not warriors. Give them weapons and let them loose, and they could wreak __havoc__, but they were hopeless once organized into line and battalions; they fought each other as much- if not more so- than the enemy. The time of the Fae warrior kings was long past, but Gardeth had been determined to bring the legends back to life in his name. _

_But Gardeth had been injured, run through with a steel blade, and the iron could not be drawn from his system. The man who would be glorious in battle now lay dying, drowning in his own betraying body. His claw-like hand grabbed for his son's, clutching it tightly against the growing darkness in his eyes._

_He'd never been proud of this son of his, this son who looked too much like his Seelie mother. The Goblin Kings were Unseelie, dark fae, but Jareth had been born with his mother's fine blond hair and mostly blue eyes. Never entirely blue, of course, that would have gone against the shifting nature of the fae, but certainly not the smoky shadows of browns and blacks that other Unseelie fae possessed. The goblins like Jareth, respected him, feared him, but it was that strange affection for him that had always revolted Gardeth. A king was not meant to be liked, especially not by such disgusting spawn as inhabited his kingdom._

_But Jareth was his only heir. Fae children were few and far between, nature's attempt at __evening__ the imbalance caused by their near-immortality. __This quiet, sulking child who played with his crystals day in and day out, who had only two centuries of life…how was he ever to be a strong ruler?_

_Gardeth clutched harder at his son's hand, almost hoping their situations could be reversed. Without a child, he could find a new fae wife, an Unseelie wife, who would give him a strong son, a son fit to rule to Labyrinth and the Goblin Kingdom. _

_That same son allowed the convulsive grip on his hand, ignoring the wiry strength that would likely leave bruises. The black leather gloves he always wore would prevent some measure of marking, and for the rest, who would see it to know? He knew what was going on in his father's mind, had always seen it flashing across his face in sneers or scowls. If nothing else, it had been that one feature that had proved him his father's son; their scowls were exactly alike, equally dark and menacing and full of damning promise._

_"Jareth…" Gardeth gasped with an effort, and his son dutifully leaned closer. "Don't be weak."_

_With that final- and only- piece of advice, Gardeth let out a rattling breath as his heart thumped painfully against his chest and stopped. _

_One of the goblins, a __surprisingly__ important looking fellow, slid his battered flop hat from his head, two tufts of wiry brown hair sticking up. "The king is dead," he pronounced solemnly. "Long live the king."_

_As one, the assembly turned away from the husk of Gardeth and bowed low to Jareth, noses sweeping the floor._

_Jareth regarded them and said nothing. _

_Nurse had known the score of things the moment they carried Gardeth back from the battlefield, and immediately set about making her charge's coronation suit. In truth, it was little different from his usual apparel, but he rarely wore anything colorful or vibrant, and that was the tradition demanded by a __coronation. She__ had it all laid out neatly on the bed when he returned from his father's room, the tight black breeches, polished knee high boots, and the vivid scarlet silk shirt. Instead of a coat, there was a long robe of black, red, and white; it was supposed to look regal, but in truth, it simply looked out of place in the Goblin City. Sweeping robes weren't meant to be worn in a place where they swept over chicken excrement and accumulated filth. _

_He dressed in them without comment, sitting down to allow her to fuss over his hair. He raised an eyebrow at the red streaks she insisted on putting in but didn't try to dissuade her. It wasn't like any foreign dignitaries would be attending. Even if it hadn't been so sudden, there wouldn't have been any honors from the other courts, not for the Goblin King. Not for the son of the man who'd dared to demand a Seelie princess as the price of a treaty._

_The coronation went off without a hitch, at least as any such ceremony could when goblins and demi-fae were in charge of it. But though the traditional speeches were mangled and the crown dropped –twice- the purpose of the event was at least completed. Jareth was now, officially, the Goblin King and Lord of the Labyrinth. _

_He suffered through the impromptu feast, much of which hadn't finished cooking due to the haste in which it had been made, and finally escaped out into the Labyrinth, shedding his robe to take on his preferred feathered form._

_The white owl winged gracefully over the maze, watching it shift restlessly, and silently soothed the ancient creation. It could sense the change in things, and wasn't sure how it felt about it yet. Jareth wasn't worried, though; the Labyrinth was fond of him, had provided endless hours of entertainment and consolation to the little boy who had gone running into the maze to __escape__ his father's anger and disappointment._

_Jareth was young by Fae standards, only two centuries; humans would have thought him twenty, and still considered him too young to hold a throne, even one so disreputable as the Goblin Kingdom. Perhaps they were even right, all of them, but it didn't change the responsibility that was now his. __He __circled the entire Labyrinth, gliding through the air with lazy beats of his wings, before settling down into a little used garden. He suspected that other than the maze itself, he and Nurse were the only other creatures to know of its existence._

_But oh, what a beautiful garden. It was a carefully contained riot of flowers blooming out of season, plants that shouldn't have been able __to grow__ together but were sustained by the magic of the Labyrinth. __It had been the Labyrinth's gift to a grieving little boy over a century before, when his lady mother had fallen ill and started fading away. He'd taken her to the garden, something Gardeth didn't know about and therefore couldn't destroy, but though it had brought a smile to her lovely face, it hadn't been enough for her magic to rejuvenate. Lahatiel had died, and the Labyrinth brought her body to rest in this small piece of heaven when Gardeth would have simply consigned it to the dumps._

_Shimmering back into his customary form, Jareth sank down onto the small marble bench, the surface done in a delicate filigree pattern of vines and flowers. His gloved fingers ran across the carved name on the plinth before him, tracing the elegant letters. He'd made this for her, with the Labyrinth's help, the first time he had attempted to integrate its magic with his. _

_Reaching into the heav__y air, Jareth produced one of his crystals. When he was an infant, she'd hung them over his cradle, watching over his dreams and chasing the frightening ones away. It was her magical legacy to him, this ability to manipulate crystals and desires. It was a Seelie trait, a blood gift that had flourished in her half-Unseelie child. He could see her in the crystal, laughing and dancing in a rare moment of joy, when she'd rescued him from an __etiquette__ lesson and stolen him away to a picnic. Gardeth had been away at the court of the Northern Elves, so the sun had been shining brightly, and they'd danced among the shattered rainbows of the crystals giving them music._

_He froze that memory into the crystal in his hand and placed it into a small niche on his mother's grave marker, watching the small snippet of time repeat. "I'm king now, Mother," he whispered, though he knew that her body was long since faded to dust. "Please be proud of me."_

_And with a single wave of his hand, he banished the thick, heavy clouds hovering over the Labyrinth. Though it would necessarily change to suit the challengers running the maze, he could at least have the sun in between those contests. His mother had loved the sun._

_The king was dead and the king lived on._

_------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------_

Upon leaving for college, Sarah had made it a rule that she was going to return to her family's house as rarely as possible. The apartment had gone a long way towards helping her in that; it was silly to be paying rent if she wasn't going to be there over the summer, so she went for a couple of weeks instead of the full three months. Holidays were another; Thanksgiving and Easter generally fell just before exams, so she used studying as an excuse to stay in Florida. Part of her would have liked to see the glorious spread of autumn leaves in New England, and certainly she wanted to see Toby, but it just wasn't worth putting up with her father and Karen for that much more time. She would have to go back for Christmas, but that wasn't for almost a month yet, so she could still be pragmatic about it.

She'd had other invitations for Thanksgiving; Professor Peables had asked her to join his family, and two of the kids in her writing class had offered to ask their parents if she could come, but she politely refused them. She was going to curl up in her bed with junk food, drinking coke laced with the vanilla rum she wasn't supposed to have, and she was going to study for her finals. Boring, she knew, but being fully prepared for something always left her with a good feeling.

Then Jareth had asked her to his flat for the day.

She'd known in a vague sort of way that he must live somewhere, but she'd honestly never thought about it. The temptation was too great, so she'd answered yes on the condition that she still be allowed to study, and he'd agreed.

Now that she was there, though, the apartment didn't really give any insight into the complicated man currently banging about the tiny kitchen with a great deal of muttered oaths. She wouldn't have bothered with a traditional Thanksgiving meal, it being just the two of them, especially with him being British, but he'd insisted. She didn't have to cook it, so she didn't argue with him.

The closed door led off to his bedroom, a sanctum she hadn't invaded with her curiosity, and the guest bathroom in the hall was empty and impersonal. But then, how many guests did he have that he would feel the need to make the effort? The second bedroom was reserved for an office done in much the same fashion as his hole at the school. Sketches, prints, and wood plates hung on the wall, small knickknacks lining the bookshelves. His desk bore groaning stacks of papers separated out by class and assignment. She could see the tests he'd been grading on Tuesday evening, red ink scoring through them liberally, as well as the essays from his pre-Tudor history section, but she couldn't identify the others with a glance, and wasn't going to go looking through them.

The main room, where she was currently ensconced with her books and notebooks, was simply decorated in midnight blue and ivory, a combination that set off his fair coloring. He had no television, but he did have an old fashioned record player that had been cycling through Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, and Beethoven. It was definitely a combination she could live with. He had a small round dining table, but she preferred to sit on the floor with her materials spread out across the low coffee table; it made it much easier to throw herself back onto the carpet when she got frustrated. She could take a few deep breaths, remind herself that the semester was almost over, and then get back to it.

He'd laughed at her the first time she did this, but that was when he was still merely perusing the cookbooks. Once he'd actually started cooking, he was a bit more sympathetic to the level of frustration.

It was nice to see him screwing something up, she mused, sneaking looks at him through the curtain of her hair. He made everything seem so easy, pulled it all off so flawlessly, that it was absurdly comforting to see him swearing at the recalcitrant can opener.

He finally reached the point where he'd done all he could for now, and he just had to leave it all sit for a while. He washed his hands and dried them on a flour covered dish towel, leaving white pasty streaks on his wet skin. Glaring at her for her muffle giggle, he rewashed them, grabbing for a clean towel this time. "I don't notice you offering to help," he told her loftily.

"I told you it was a daft idea to go to all this effort for two people," she returned lazily.

He made a face and stretched out on the couch, his long legs sprawling before him. "And are you getting anything accomplished, seeing as you've been spending so much time laughing at me?"

Sarah nodded, absently frowning at the smear of bright purple ink staining the side of her right hand. She made all of her notes in black ink for classes, but studied in vibrant color; it was easier to go back to the important bits that way. "I got my portfolio finished for Genres of Fiction, and I'm almost done with my portfolio for Professor Peables, I just have to print everything off and put it in the folder at home. I'm feeling pretty good for Late Shakespeare, History of Imperial Russia, and Theatre History 1, so all I really have to cram for is the anatomy for the written portion of Life Drawing."

"My, my, that is an eclectic class schedule."

She grinned suddenly, a light-hearted expression he hadn't seen on her in a very long time. "If you have the right scholarships, college is a time when strangers pay you to learn anything you want. I intend to take full advantage of that."

His rich laugh washed over her and her smile deepened into something truer. She liked it when he laughed without mocking someone. "Would you like some help studying?"

"What about your gastronomical masterpiece?"

He glared at her, but the laughter still lurking in his eyes greatly lessened the effect. "It's in progress. Too much fussing with ruin it."

"And you're familiar enough with anatomy?"

"Oh, I'm very familiar with anatomy," he purred, and she shivered. "Come sit up on the couch."

"But I'm comfortable here."

"Please."

Grumbling good-naturedly, as well as a little suspiciously, she unfolded and winced as she stretched, her joints popping in protest at the sudden movement after hours spent on the floor. As he pulled her book onto the arm of the couch, she collapsed next to him on the cushions. It took a moment of repositioning before he was satisfied, and she wasn't sure how much studying she was going to get done sprawled halfway across his lap, but it felt nice so she wasn't going to argue.

"Name the body parts I indicate," he murmured in her ear. Now she was thinking vaguely of arguing, but only vaguely. His fingers ghosted lightly across her forehead.

"Frontal bone," she answered automatically.

"Very good. And this?"

It was already hard to concentrate on anything other than his fingers dragging through the roots of her hair. "Parietal bone." She gasped when his knuckles pressed against the softer spot just above the base. "Occipital bone."

"And just below it?"

"The atlas."

Pressing the back of her head against his shoulder, he rubbed his hand across her face in a fleeting caress, his thumb stroking her cheek. "And this?"

"Zygomatic bone."

"Mandible."

"Spinal column."

"Clavicle."

She bit her lip as his hand forged a strong path down her sternum, pressing gently against the xyphoid process, tracing along the line of each rib. Her heart was hammering in her chest, for all that each touch was little more than a brush of his fingers. Her eyes slipped closed, and she was perversely pleased to feel his heartbeat grow unsteady against her back.

"Iliac crest."

"Femur."

His hand sroked back along her side, squeezing her shoulder tightly, and she named the joint in a breathy whisper. He moved reluctantly back from her, his finger sliding between them.

"Scapula."

He pressed against the point of each vertebra, frowning when he realized how much weight she'd lost since the beginning of the semester. They shouldn't have been this visible. His other hand moved down her arm, her murmur naming the humerus, the ulna, the radius, and the metacarpals. Her head lolled back, the pulse beating rapidly in the hollow of his throat, and he soothed it with his thumb.

Jareth closed his eyes, reveling in her openness, her responsiveness. His nose rested against her scalp, breathing in the scent of her, as he retraced a path along her breasts and abdomen. His fingers danced along the line of her jeans but made no attempt to slip within them. He simply enjoyed the feel of her skin beneath his touch, the silkiness of her flesh and the press of her back against his chest with every breath she took.

"I think your bird is burning," she said suddenly, and his eyes blinked open slowly.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Your turkey. I think it's burning."

With a sulfurous oath, he was off the couch and in the kitchen in a flash. He opened the oven door, only to have a plume of black smoke escape. The smoke alarm over the stove began blaring obnoxiously and he swatted at it with a towel. The next few minutes were a blur, turning off the stove, waving his hands and towel at the smoke to dissipate it, trying to unhook the smoke detector so it would just shut up…Finally the noise stopped. He rested his hands on his hips, scowling at the blackened mass within the tinfoil that was supposed to be his turkey.

Sarah was laughing her head off. With the detector finally silent, he could hear it ringing through the small apartment, and he glanced at her over the shoulder. She had collapsed completely onto the couch, tears streaming down her crimson face, her arms clutched about her aching abdomen. She couldn't seem to stop, not even when her chest was aching with the need to breathe normally.

She was still giggling intermittently when he returned with the bag of Chinese take-out.

"Oh, as if you have never burned anything," he said sourly, handing her the plastic container of wonton soup.

"Never so spectacularly," she retorted, sticking her tongue out at him. "I once burned the apple pie for Christmas, but Karen hadn't trusted me to make it right anyway, so she'd already made two others."

"It's only a turkey."

For some reason, that set her off laughing again. He could only shake his head and stab his chopsticks viciously into the box of beef and broccoli.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

_Nurse, Nenny, Nonny, and Jehosophat_

_By Sarah Williams_

_Nurse, Nenny, Nonny, and Jehosophat sat together around a large quilting frame, gossiping contentedly __as their bone needles wove in and out of the pliant fabric. There was an ambassador from the Seelie Court present in the castle, despite said ambassador's fervent protests, and the faeries had diligently eavesdropped to get as much dirt as they could on their more glorious cousins. _

_"Imagine, the king chasing after his niece's daughter that way," Nenny clucked, shaking her head. Nenny was a true goblin, though a cleaner one than most. That came from working in the castle; the royal family liked things clean, they did, and who was she to argue with the people supplying her with a way to feed herself and her family? Her muddy brown eyes never looked up from the squares of cloth. "And her being set to marry that Elven duke?"_

_Nonny made a sound of disapproving agreement, especially since she was distantly relate to the duke in question. Nonny was only half elf, but she favored their appearance more than her quarter goblin, __quarter dwarf side. There were still apparent features; her nose was a little too large and bulbous, and her hair, when not confined by a grey mob cap, was coarse and raggly, but she was fair of __complexion__ with large eyes the same leafy green as the elves' forests. _

_"Some folks think they're above the rules," Nurse sniffed. She did her best with each generation to train them out of that, but there were some- like the current king- who proved to be disappointments. _

_"Still, she set him straight about that, she did," Jehosophat reminded them. __He was half-fae, half faerie, an unlikely combination that threw some doubt as to how pure either or those bloodlines were to allow such a thing, and he took up the fourth corner of the frame, his delicate fingers patiently setting a complicated stitch into the pattern. __He looked like a child, though he was fully grown, and his stunted, useless wings fluttered behind him in a constant fall of glitter. He carried a hand broom and dust pan with him at all times when he was sitting, so as not to leaves piles of the sparkly stuff all over the castle. "If she'd done that here, she would have found herself in an oubliette and still obliged to diddle the fool."_

_The biddies hushed him severely__; the__ walls had ears, sometimes literally, and it never served to seem critical of the king._

_"Still, though," Nenny mused a moment later. "It was well done of her."_

_"I just feel bad for the High Queen."_

_All four of them cackled uproariously, their needles never faltering in their progress along the quilt. __Queen Lahatiel had asked them to make it for the young prince's bed, as he was really outgrowing the baby blanket he'd had for the last eighty years. __They had already pieced together the patches of black, white, and soft blue into a dizzying pattern of diamonds and squares, and now were stitching it onto the fleecy lining in a complicated spill of vines and whorls. The thread was nearly __invisible__, but the fae prince wouldn't be able to resist running his fingers along the lines to trace it, so though it was difficult work, they wanted him to enjoy the puzzle. _

_The future recipient of their work raced into the room, giggling like mad, and promptly hid himself beneath the fabric. Nurse, Nenny, Nonny, and Jehosophat didn't even pause, though they did subtly start censoring their talk a little more carefully. The prince was just shy of his first century; there were certain things he didn't need to know yet. _

_Queen Lahatiel__ glided into the room, her cornflower blue eyes dancing with subdued mirth. When the quilters made to rise and curtsey, she dissuaded them with a graceful wave of her hand. "You haven't by chance seen my son around, have you?"_

_The four creatures gravely shook their heads, despite the __mischievous__ giggle that drifted out from under the frame. _

_"That's a shame," she replied with an exaggerated sigh. "I had such plans for him."_

_A curious silence filled the space, and Nurse smiled knowingly. "Plans, your Majesty? What kind of plans?"_

_"Were you going to make him do all the castle dishes?"_

_"Clean the oubliettes with his toothbrush?"_

_"Study his lessons?"_

_"Oh, no," she assured them. "They were much more horrible than that."_

_Nurse snapped her fingers. "You were going to make him eat his vegetables!"_

_A horrified gasp was muffled by the fabric. _

_But the beautiful queen merely shook her head, deep dimples appearing in her cheek. "I heard there was a quilt being made," she confided loudly. "I was going to steal him away and hide underneath it, and keep him captive while we played palace. Then I was going to send for biscuits and tea, and stay underneath it and tell stories."_

_"I'm here, I'm here!" __squawked__ the little prince, hurling himself up and into his mother's arms. "Oh, please do those things! I promise they'll be horrible, please!"_

_They all laughed as the woman gathered her son close to her and hugged him tightly. "Of course we shall, and we'll start right now."_

_Nurse watched mother and child __disappear back__ under the quilt, though the queen had to curl herself around Jareth in order to actually fit under __the frame__. One brown hand rose and swiped away a tear that was threatening to fall; these moments were so precious when they were allowed to happen. Another tear rolled down her face and splashed onto the quilt, but she let it be. Love couldn't happen without the occasional tears. She smiled through them and continued sewing._

_As Lahatiel and Jareth giggled and whispered in their make-believe palace, Nurse, Nenny, Nonny, and Jehosophat listened and nodded, their bone needles weaving in and out of the pliant fabric._

_---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------_

Sarah awoke disoriented, blinking as she tried to take in her unfamiliar surrounds. She was lying on something very soft, in a dark room. Something with the quiet whisper of silk fluttered in an invisible breeze around her, and she realized dimly that she must be in Jareth's bedroom. When had she fallen asleep?

She turned her head and found him stretched out beside her, propped up one elbow and watching her. A small smile creased his lips. He reached out with one hand, brushing a lock of hair from her face. "You are awake."

"When did I fall asleep?"

"A few hours ago; I thought it best to let you sleep, with all the studying you've been doing." He cocked his head to one side, scrutinizing her face. "I thought it was only turkey that was supposed to make people drowsy, not the day itself."

"That's a lie," she yawned. "People take naps so they can escape their family for a few hours."

She should have been nervous, lying in his bed, but she felt strangely relaxed. His fingers lingered against her face, tracing the bones with a delicate touch. "Sarah…"

She turned instinctively into his kiss, feeling him roll partially onto her for better balance. His other hand rose to cup her face and he deepened the kiss, exploring her mouth with a possessive tenderness. When his fingers slid down to the buttons on her shirt, she made no protest, but lifted her arms to give him better access.

"I don't want to push," he murmured hoarsely, but the buttons were already sliding neatly out of the holes to fall away.

She didn't answer directly, but instead shyly tugged his shirt out of his trousers, her hands brushing along the bare skin at his waist. His breath caught in his throat; it was the first time she'd ever made the slightest advance. It had always been him pushing, always him starting. The feel of her innocent hands on his back was astonishingly arousing and he bit down on his groan, not wanting to scare her.

He pulled her shirt from underneath her and dropped it to the floor, her bra following a heartbeat later. His fine hair teased along her breasts, the soft points tickling the sensitive skin there. He carefully opened her jeans, expecting her to tense, but she pulled his shirt up his body until it caught on his arms. He whipped it off and tossed it away, tugging gently on her jeans until they slid down her legs. She awkwardly tried to help him until he chuckled and pushed her hands away, removing the denim and letting it fall on top of their shirts.

His hands smoothed up her long legs, not lingering, but somehow setting every inch of flesh on fire. He touched her through her underwear and she gasped. He backed away, dancing attention onto her breasts and face.

She was drowning in his kisses, the world falling away from her. Nothing existed anymore but for his mouth and hands on her, the drugging potency of his touch on her skin. Surprising herself with her bravery, she placed one hand against the front of his trousers, squeezing it lightly.

Jareth went still above her, suddenly searching her face intently. "Are you sure?" he demanded, his normally silky voice rough. "Gods, Sarah, are you sure?"

"No," she answered honestly. "But then, how sure am I of anything these days?"

He groaned and hid his face in her hair, holding his body away from her. "I don't want this to be something you regret, something you're not ready for."

She brought one of his hands to her throat, where he could feel the thin chain of his mother's necklace. "That was the time to make the choice," she told him softly. "Now it's just a function of living with it."

His teeth scraped along her neck and she shivered, knowing she had just made it impossible to turn back. He rolled away from her briefly to remove his trousers, kicking them away, and was instantly back over her, his hands igniting her more than she thought possible. He left her underwear, a plain white cotton that didn't surprise him in the slightest, where it was for now, letting her get accustomed to the feel of his bare skin against hers.

She jumped slightly when she felt him hard against her leg, but he rubbed her stomach strongly. "Don't be frightened, Sarah."

"I'm not, just very…very inexperienced."

His low laugh was a little wicked, and it sent stabbing points of pleasure through her entire body. "You're perfect."

"Can you…can you kiss me?" she asked, blushing in spite of herself.

He didn't chuckle but simply slid up her body to capture her mouth in his, patiently teasing her tongue to entwine with his in an ancient dance. She moved restlessly beneath him, burning inside but not knowing what to do to sate it, ease it. Tangling his hands in his hair, he kissed his way down her neck, paying special attention to that blindingly sensitive spot behind her ear, and nibbled a path along her collarbone. She sighed and stretched into him, needing more than just the partial weight against her.

Jareth worshipped her with tongue, teeth, and hands, patiently pushing her higher and higher until she shattered. When he finally removed her underwear, she didn't even hesitate, but kicked them off her foot as soon as he slid them down. She heard the crinkle of a wrapper and then he braced himself on either side of her, their faces only a breath apart. She took a deep, shuddering breath as he positioned himself against her.

"Look at me," he commanded, and at the absolute power in his voice she slowly forced her eyes open to meet his fierce gaze. Her grey-green eyes were glazed with passion, her face flushed with the desire he had awoken in her. He kept her steady gaze as he pushed carefully into her, moving past her maidenhead with a sharp flash of pain. She cried out and his hands stroked her sides strongly, soothing her. It passed quickly and she squirmed impatiently under him. With a smirk, he gave her what she wanted, what he'd been wanting to give her for so very long.

She watched him through half-open eyes afterwards as he threw away the condom and wrapped a damp cloth from the bathroom to clean them both. She lay bonelessly against the covers, sated and sore and becoming just a trifle self-conscious.

He sank back down beside her and snaked an arm around her to pull her close. "No regrets?" he murmured.

She shook her head, laying her cheek against his chest. She could hear his heart beating. "No regrets." _Yet_, her traitorous mind added, but she didn't voice it.

His hand trailed down her hip, tracing the dark lines he'd noticed earlier but was too distracted to comment upon. "You have an inkscar."

"Most people call it a tattoo."

"When are you going to learn that I'm not most people?" he asked her, and she almost laughed, remembering the last time he'd asked her that. The situation wasn't that dissimilar, really. His fingernail re-drew the lines over her right hip-bone and she closed her eyes, feeling him close the circle on the crystal. His thumb smoothed over the single owl feather it contained, curled in such a way that it could have been floating- or falling; she'd never really figured out which. "This isn't new," he continued after a moment.

"I got it when I was fifteen."

He raised his eyebrows, planting a kiss against the back of her shoulder. "I thought it was sixteen with parental consent, which I strongly doubt you had."

He could actually feel her skin heat with her blush. "I lied about my age. I used my mom's old driver's license."

"Why?" he asked simply, wondering if the answer would be as simple.

It wasn't, and she turned it over in her head several times, waiting patiently for the right words to piece themselves together into the puzzle. "I needed it to be real," she said finally. "Back then, this way the only way I knew how."

His arm tightened about her and she nestled in closer to him. They were both sticky with sweat, but she twisted about until she could feel him totally against her, burying her face in the curve of his neck where it met his shoulder. He stroked her hair and they lay in silence but for the whisper of silk in the breeze of the ceiling fan.


	8. Defying Gravity

**Disclaimer: As per the usual, I own nothing, I make no money off of anything, and if you were to sue me, you'd come up empty handed.**

_A/N: Please excuse the momentary interruption in the good behavior; there was a housing explosion of sorts, and I decided that making sure I have a place to live was slightly more important than resettling my frazzled brain for this chapter. That being said, here it is! And, as always, please review; I really am a junkie. Minutes after I've posted the chapter, I sit in my email and keep hitting refresh. Yeh, I'm that pathetic._

**Chapter Eight: Defying Gravity**

Her finals were done, she mused, staring out the window of the car as they passed downtown. Most of her professors had posted grades already, and they were pretty much what she was expecting. The one that hadn't posted yet was the only one she was worried about; her History of Imperial Russia exam had included more legal reforms than the professor had warned them to study. But, it was done, and worrying about it wasn't going help anything now.

She hated the vague, restless feeling that always came on her at the end of the semester. Classes were done but the next set was three or four weeks away yet. Those weeks made her feel like she was drifting.

But this year there was Jareth. Her eyes travelled to him, but if he noticed her gaze he made no comment; his entire attention seemed to be focused on the road, on the drivers weaving through the lanes of the busy interstate, but things weren't always as they seemed.

What an unexpected anchor. This strange, enigmatic man, who with a single word could send her spiraling off into that terrible in-between of floating and falling, was the only thing making her feel real during the time of transition from one semester to the next.

They turned off of the interstate, patiently trudging through the lines of cars trying to get in the correct lanes before the divide. Many would continue on to the airport, but most would make their way onto US-19 towards Clearwater, hoping to avoid congestion on the Howard Frankland Bridge. The station wagon made the curve to the airport, dutifully following all the signs to the blue line short term parking.

Jareth was opening her door before she could finish untangling herself from the seatbelt. It was one of the many little things he did that in anyone else she would have called old-fashioned. He opened doors, held out chairs, carried bags, and offered his arm, all without ever seeming to think about it. With that in mind, she didn't argue when he slung her duffel bag over one arm, laying the other about her shoulders.

They still didn't speak as she redeemed her e-ticket and checked her bag. Only when they stood before the shuttle leading to the terminal did he finally break the silence.

"You don't want to go," he said quietly, smoothing her hair back away from her face.

She grimaced, barely keeping herself from shaking her head. "Home is…home is awkward."

He didn't ask for more than that; she suspected he didn't need to. "It's just a week and a half. It will be over soon enough."

Sarah couldn't help but smile at that. In a fit of brilliant inspiration, she'd told her father that she had to be back by the New Year to help Professor Peables during planning week. It had worked, not only worked but cut off an entire week from her visit. She wished he could go with her on the shuttle, keep her company until the flight to stave off the drifting.

Damn security.

She sighed, eliciting a soft chuckle from him. "Patience," he cautioned.

"Patience if for those old enough to enjoy the anticipation." He gave her an odd look and she flushed. "It sounded better in my head."

"I see." He wrapped his arms around and held her close, letting her feel the rise and fall of his chest against her cheek. "I'll be here when you get back."

"Will you?" she asked without thinking.

He didn't make light of it, but neither did he ignore it as she half-expected. It was their rule, after all; leave the thought unspoken, the wish unmade. Instead, he lifted her chin until she met his queer blue eyes. "I have told you I will be," he said simply.

Strange how he said that like it was enough. Even stranger how it was.

"You need time to get through security," he reminded her. "You'd best go now."

"I know."

Shaking his head, he bent down and kissed her lingeringly. It didn't push, didn't demand. It just felt right, a soft goodbye that wasn't any kind of good-bye at all.

The feel of that kiss against her lips stayed with her through the shuttle ride across the gap, through security and boarding, and even through take-off. It was only when there was nothing but air between the flying metal box and the firm earth that the phantom sensation of his lips against hers faded. With a deep sigh, one that drew the curious look of the matronly woman sitting beside her, Sarah dug through her messenger bag until she could pull out one of her composition books. They couldn't put the trays down yet, and her handwriting would be atrocious trying to balance the book on her legs at such an awkward angle, but her fingers itched with the need to write, to do something, anything.

She found a position that seemed to work without crowding the well-meaning snoop on her right, and let the words flow without thought from her pen onto the paper.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

_I, Furball, Mighty Hunter_

_By Sarah Williams_

_It's so pretty._

_Perfectly round, gleaming with hidden lights and sparkles, it sits a short distance away from me, just waiting, easy prey. It is utterly defenseless, especially against such a skilled hunter as myself. I hunker low to the ground, my paws drawn in close beneath me. My tail twitches madly behind me, preparing to balance me with my next movement. My muscles draw tightly together, readying for the spring._

_And then it happens!_

_I pounce! I am flying through the air in a graceful curve, everything beautiful and strong, my claws unsheathed as I reach towards the pretty ball._

_**Thump!**_

_I land in an undignified sprawl within whisker twitch of the pretty, my legs splayed out around me. I quickly roll onto my back, paws kneading the air, and cast about quick looks to see if I've been __spotted. A__ soft sound comes from somewhere off to my right._

_"Nice try, cat, but I know that wasn't what you meant to do."_

_I scowl, whiskers twitching. I know that voice; it's my person's pet. I crane my head towards him, seeing him taking up a great deal of room in the window my person uses to spread her cloth. I turn back from him pointedly, rolling onto my side to begin washing myself with completely natural nonchalance. It's completely natural, I swear!_

_The pet laughs again, but I ignore him, as is only fitting. _

_I, Furball, Mighty Hunter, am never less than dignified._

_Before long, the pretty catches my eye again. It's just sitting there, taunting me, waiting for me. I can only partially see through it, though it should be like the windows I touch my nose to. The birds tease me outside of those, trying to make me run into the clear hard stuff. But this doesn't let me see entirely through it. It's as secretive as a cat, which is high praise indeed._

_I don't try to pounce this time; it's already foiled me that way. Instead, I saunter boldly up to it and sit before it, touching it gently with the pad of my paw. It doesn't move. I meow curiously, pawing it again. It's smooth, and a trifle cold._

_I jump on top of it, curling around it. It rolls! All of a sudden, I find myself flat on my back, my paws still wrapped around the crystal. _

_My person's pet is laughing again._

_I glare at him, my whiskers twitching._

_One of his fingers makes a lazy gesture and the pretty floats away from me, the round smoothness giving no purchase for my claws to keep their prize. _

_The challenge is on, now. The silly pet will quickly learn that I, Furball, Mighty Hunter, am not to be trifled with. _

_I race after the crystal, pouncing, only to have it shoot away from me. Every pounce is rewarded with my prize hopping away, each time at a gesture from the pet. I grow frustrated. I am a mighty hunter! I should be yielding better results than this!_

_Still chasing, I begin to cry, the sounds bringing my person rushing into the room._

_"Oh, Fates preserve us, Jareth, fool boy, stop tormenting that cat."_

_Now it is the pet who scowls, as my person scoops me up and strokes me. I peer through her arms at the chastised pet, letting him see the laughter in my eyes. I am Furball, and I always win, with a little patience._

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sarah wasn't too worried when she didn't see her father waiting for her at the baggage claim; she didn't really expect he would be. She found her duffel without a problem and took the time to shrug into her heavy coat, wrapping the scarf several times around her neck. The scarf was a gift from Jareth, a mossy green chenille that perfectly matched her eyes, and had the added benefit of being warm. Properly geared against the cold and wet, she made her way outside to wait for the shuttle.

Her father lived nearly an hour away from the airport, and she forced herself to make polite small talk with the other passengers. Then, when she was the only one left, she moved up front to chat with the driver, someone she'd known since she was small and taking the shuttle to the airport to see her mother. He asked after her studies, told her about how much his grandchildren had grown, and when they pulled up in front of the little white house, he winked and wished her a Merry Christmas. She smiled and wished him the same.

Her father and Karen pulled up while she was juggling her keys, trying to sort out the right one with her gloved fingers. She gave them a mechanical smile and picked up her bag, following them in through the garage.

"Sarah, honey, how was your flight?"

"It was fine, Dad," she answered. "I had to remember to keep extra clothes in my backpack, though; people in Florida are still wearing shorts and t-shirts."

Karen had yet to even look in her direction, but Toby was squirming in the back seat, his entire face lit up in a grin. "Sarah!"

"Hey, Toby! Are you glad to see me?"

Karen sniffed; obviously, she still wasn't forgiven for Toby's owl dream.

"Sarah, would you mind terribly baby-sitting Toby tonight?" her father asked her, closing the garage door before he remembered to turn on the overhead light. He shuffled his way carefully to the inside door and found the switch, illuminating the darkness. "A last minute engagement came up with the office, and we really should go."

"That's fine." It wasn't really any different than she'd been expecting, and this would give her time alone with her little brother. He was the only one she wanted to see anyway.

While the two adults changed, and Toby went rummaging in his room to find all the treasures he'd been wanting to show her, Sarah carried her bag upstairs to her old room. She supposed it was technically still her room, but it just didn't feel like it anymore.

The room had become frozen in time, with only carefully chosen mementos left unpacked to remind her of how it had once been. Gone were the myriad stuffed animals, the desk labyrinth, the scores of children's books stacked on the floor beside the white princess vanity. Gone too were the costumes, many of the posters, and all the pictures of what the younger Sarah had believed to be her mother's triumphs. The MC Escher print was still on the wall, along with a handful of certificates and paper awards for her writing through high school. On her vanity, where once there had been a picture of Linda and her boyfriend du jour there was now taped a photo of Sarah and Toby in the park.

It looked empty, she realized, like it wasn't a room at all, just a space waiting to have a purpose. She could sympathize with that feeling. But then Toby came bounding into the room, his grinning face still chubby with baby fat, and it felt a little less empty.

"Can we watch a movie during dinner?" he asked, his soprano voice coming out in a hushed whisper, afraid his mother would overhear from two rooms away.

"Sure," she whispered back conspiratorially. "What would you like to watch?"

"Duck Tales!"

She laughed and hugged him close, breathing in the unique smell of grass and soap and dirt that was every little boy. "Absolutely," she promised, and he gave a muffled cheer into her shoulder.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

_A Fish Breathing Fire_

_By Sarah Williams_

_Jareth looked around him and nodded once, satisfied that everything was as it should be. He'd been putting off this visit for over a year, but there was no delaying it anymore. He intended to make sure it was a memorable occasion._

_He'd been the Goblin King for two years now, stepping easily into his father's place and making the kingdom run more smoothly than the old man had ever been capable of. The goblins loved him and were terrified of him, a combination that brought about every bumbling attempt on their part to do what __he wished. They gleefully chased the trolls away from the southern border, not so much for revenge for their fallen king, but because their new king mentioned that it might be nice. The sun was shining over the labyrinth, except when some foolish girl wished away a child and needed the labyrinth to be a place of dark trials. Then the clouds gathered and boiled, but for all other times, the seasons and weather once more regained their natural course. _

_The Seelie Court had sent its first official envoy to the new administration just after his father's funeral. It had simply been an acknowledgment in the change of leadership, not demanding anything, not requesting anything. They'd given him a year before beginning to request his presence at the High Court, a delicately worded query that made it seem like it was a personal note, an off th__e hand invitation from his grandfather__. So he'd ignored it. He'd ignored the others with equal aplomb; as long as they stayed on a theoretically personal level, he could pretend personal reasons for not accepting._

_Then, finally, had come the __official__ summons from the High King; the Goblin King was required to present himself to the Seelie Court. But, a king couldn't be expected to present himself without an escort, __surely. So__, he'd gathered an escort _appropriate_ for the Goblin King._

_"Your Majesty, are thou prepared?"_

_He looked down his nose- a long way down- at the small fox at his feet. His usual steed, a fluffy, shaggy sheepdog with the unlikely name of Ambrosius, had actually hidden under a bridge, wedging himself so far into the chink between two stones that he'd gotten stuck. His left back paw had been badly strained, so Sir Didymus could not cajole or bully him into making the journey. Jareth wasn't even sure why he was taking the overly enthusiastic knight- it certainly wasn't for protection- but he was mildly curious to see what effect his chivalrous attentions would have on the haughty Seelie ladies._

_To his left, the rest of his contingent waited, starting to argue and scuffle amidst themselves as they grew bored. It was a fairly decent selection spanning the variety of races and half-breeds living in his kingdom. Goblins, dwarves, faeries, Rock-callers, and a smattering of the fae half-breeds of every sort. He'd even persuaded one of the junk ladies to come, luring her with the promise of any number of trinkets she might find to add to her collection. _

_Nurse had flat out refused to come. She'd sniffed and firmly planted herself in the __window seat__ with a basket of mending. He wanted to see her chastise the High King for the way he'd treated his daughter, exiling her to the Goblin Court and its dour king for the sake a treaty; she refused to go for the same reasons. She couldn't very well protect her charge by injuring the High King of the Seelie Court, and she doubted any guard, no matter how devoted to his duty, would be able to stop her if she was really determined. _

_"Yes, Sir Didymus, I am ready," he answered finally. "Let us go."_

_He could have simply whisked them all directly into the Seelie Court, could have done so very easily in fact if he borrowed power from the Labyrinth, but he chose to make the journey in the proper fashion. He intended to enjoy the sight their odd little party would make traveling through the elegant Seelie countryside. Maybe they could accidentally pillage a village or three…no, he decided, it would be difficult to explain an accidental pillaging, though such a thing happened frequently around the borders of the Goblin Kingdom. _

_The journey was long and eventful in the manner only Goblins and Unseelie can manage, and Jareth enjoyed every minute of it, observing all of the antics with his unique brand of dark amusement. By the time they finally approached the High King's palace, the guards were eying them warily. Just to heighten their confusion, Jareth had told his charges only moments before to be on their very best behavior. That, of course, was still extremely crass by the standards of the Court, but he had gained from them a promise not to expel any bodily functions in public, and that was something at least._

_The grandfather__ he'd met only once before, at the Naming Ceremony for which he'd made his only other visit to the Seelie Court, met him in the throne room with a strained smile. "Grandson, how you've grown."_

_"Indeed, your Majesty, how you've not."_

_The High King frowned slightly, deciphering the words to search for possible insult. It could still have been there, so subtly laced that even he couldn't prove it, but Jareth merely bowed with a pleasant echo of a smile. _

_Despite the urgency of the summons, it was four days before Jareth saw his grandfather again. His goblins spent the time terrorizing the arrogant fae with their attempts at politeness. To see a goblin smile was not an easy thing; to let one kiss your hand was horrifying indeed, but the goblins saw the acts of the fae around them and wanted to ape them. Jareth enjoyed seeing the well-bred ladies faint each time a goblin tackled her to the floor, grabbed her hand, and slobbered on it. He pretended to censure them, but the goblins recognized the game he'd played so often with them as a prince, and they dutifully promised to behave and then resumed their actions as soon as he was out of sight. _

_When his grandfather did summon him, it was with the more informal __mien__ of the first few notes he'd sent after the coronation. Jareth chose to respond in kind, showing up in the High King's opulent study in moleskin breeches and an open chested shirt, the polished black heels clicking on the floor to bring attention up his legs to more clearly defined attributes. The expression on the High King's face flickered with chagrin, but he skillfully swept it away in a bland smile and waved Jareth to a seat._

_Jareth complied, crossing his legs up on the edge of the desk. That clumps of dirt flaked off onto the stacks of papers, he pretended not to notice._

_High King Llewellyn leaned back in his chair and studied the stranger before him, this stranger who bore his daughter's blood. He had known Lahatiel would be wildly unhappy in the Goblin Kingdom, but the treaty had been necessary; the Seelie Court needed the Goblin lords as allies, as a friendly voice in the Unseelie Courts. Never mind that he'd placed both his daughter and his future grandson in a highly unenviable position; Jareth had to rule his own kingdom while walking a very fine line between the Seelie and Unseelie Courts. _

_He could see his daughter in the young man before him, in his coloring and the delicate bones of his face. He didn't see Lahatiel's serenity, though, the strained grace with which she faced her hardest endeavors. Jareth had inherited his father's sense of purpose, and perhaps his sense of cruelty as well. Certainly he'd inherited his excessively warped sense of humor, to inflict his spawning subjects on the ladies of the court. _

_Llewellyn decided to come straight to the point, make this visit as short as possible and ensure that there would little reason for him to return any time soon. A king's place was with his lands, after all, with his people, no matter how strange those people might be. He cleared his throat delicately, feeling the young man's razor-sharp attention focus on him. The boy's posture was as rela__x__ed as before, but every line of him thrummed with tension._

_"With your father's unexpected demise, Grandson, I wonder if you've perhaps given consideration to securing your legacy?"_

_"You mean marriage, Grandfather? Begetting an heir?"_

_There was something __distinctly__ mocking about his voice, but the old man still couldn't quite place the insult. "Yes, precisely. You have no heir at the moment, no siblings or even cousins to whom you could pass on your throne."_

_"Yes, I'm aware."_

_Growing increasingly uncomfortable, he strove to continue. "There are, of course, no suitable prospects dwelling within your own borders, and I have no way to know the status within the Unseelie Court, but I wish to introduce you to several well-bred young ladies who would make a very advantageous alliance. Some of them even have lands near yours."_

_Jareth smiled thinly, his fierce eyes narrowed beneath their sweeping brows. "Ah, yes, an advantageous alliance, such as the one that brought my mother to wither away in my court."_

_Llewellyn swallowed; he had expected this grandson of his to be more than a little backward, as unwashed and unlearned as the goblins under his command. That he showed all the elegance and dangerous intelligence of the fae- all and then some, perhaps- was distinctly unsettling. He had to try to rework his entire approach now, and he wasn't sure quite how. "Had you any thoughts of your own on that subject?" he asked carefully._

_"The Labyrinth prefers to choose such things for itself; when it finds the female it wants, she will become queen."_

_He looked sharply at Jareth, trying to discern, once again, if he was being mocked._

_Jareth gave another tight-lipped, enigmatic smirk. "Surely you've realized, Grandfather, in your many years, that the Labyrinth is a sentient being? It has preferences, and opinions. It will decide who it wants to share its power with."_

_ "I have my doubts that it chose your father."_

_"It didn't; one can rule the Goblin Kingdom without ruling the Labyrinth."_

_Llewellyn didn't think Jareth had that problem. He shifted aside some papers to give himself time to think. "What, precisely, are the duties of the Goblin Queen? Lahatiel never did tell me."_

_"Lahatiel was not given the duties of a queen, merely the name of one."_

_"And your queen? What would her duties be?"_

_"It would depend on the queen, and on the Labyrinth."_

_The old man was beginning to think that the young one had learned his way of speech from the bloody maze, all turns and circles going nowhere. "A proper queen, then, one of whom the Labyrinth approved."_

_Lacing his fingers together over his stomach, Jareth continued to smile at the old man.__ "A proper queen? Well, that is a fuzzy question." He made a show out of thinking over it, aware of every cautious glance he received. "The household would be hers to organize; the servants, the supplies, the cleanliness and care, would all be under her purview. That would include the day to day tasks as well as restoring the castle properly each time the Labyrinth has been run." He drummed his fingers against the back of his other hand, letting the old man sweat it out. "Bearing an heir, of course, is a given. Too, she would be responsible for the wished-away children until a suitable place is made for them."_

_He didn't say that the families were carefully considered, were looked over stringently to make sure that they would truly care for their human child, make sure they could support the child in all its stages of growth. Would love the child. Very few outside the Goblin Kingdom knew what happened to those broken angels; most assumed that the king turned them into goblins somehow, as if that could ever happen. He preferred to leave it that way; secrets of the Seelie Court had a way of leaking Aboveground to become part of their legends; making the girls (and occasional boys) believe he would turn the child into a goblin was often the only leverage he had to convince them to run the Labyrinth. _

_Too, he didn't want his grandfather believing there was any kindness to the Goblin Kingdom, didn't want him trying to divine any softness to exploit. __Let him believe the worst, just so long as he kept his Seelie nose out of it. They weren't family, merely blood, and separated blood at that. _

_"She would also be in charge of the Kingdom were I to leave it for any reason," he went on._

_"Who is in charge for you now?"_

_"Nurse," he answered blandly, pleased to see the old man wince. Though Nurse passed down with the Unseelie goblin lords, she'd been instantly fond of Lahatiel, and had raked the old man over the coals for his unkind exile of his only daughter._

_Llewellyn was __embarrassingly__ grateful when one of his aides announced the arrival of the delegation from the Mountain and Night and Sorrow. He made his relieved farewells to his grandson, not inquiring after the timing of his departure but knowing it would be soon. _

_Jareth didn't see the old man again before his death a few centuries later, nor did he attend his uncle's coronation. But, by then, there were larger things to be dealing with; the Labyrinth was getting rest__ive. It was impatient to find its__ queen._

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sarah pulled on her coat, looking about for Merlin before she remembered that he wasn't alive anymore. She'd come home last Christmas to find out he'd been hit by a car a few streets away; he'd died in October, but she hadn't found out till she'd come home and asked. Well, she was going for a walk anyway. Toby was spending the day at a friend's birthday party and her father and Karen were off at work.

She smiled a little at that thought. Karen had never been one for the workforce; she preferred to be an arm ornament. But then Mrs. Jennings, his plump and grey haired secretary, retired and was replaced by a striking young redhead in short skirts and heels. Sarah could still remember Karen's hissy fit, and nothing would satisfy her but that the redhead was sent packing. To fill the void, Karen became the secretary, running his life at the office as surely as she ran his life at home.

Wrapping her scarf around her throat, Sarah lifted one end to her face, breathing in his scent. It shouldn't still be lingering in the cloth, not with how much she'd worn it now, but she could still smell it. She walked out of the house, locking it behind her. They'd never locked the door before for short trips, but a year and a half of living alone in an apartment in Tampa had gotten her in the habit.

She glanced up at the gutter, knowing she'd see the white owl. She'd noticed it her first night back, when she and Toby had run outside to have a snow fight. It hadn't hooted, nor had it flown away, but simply stayed up on the gutter and watched them. Much as he was watching her now. She cocked her head to one side, considering the beautiful bird. "Are you coming?" she asked finally. It blinked at her regally, but when she started walking, it followed her on silent wings.

The town hadn't changed much. She wasn't sure why she'd expected it; it hadn't changed her entire life, and probably for the lifetime of several people before that. It was still a quiet, sleepy little New England town. She made her way through the streets, still except for women doing errands. Equality in the workforce had been slow to catch on here; there were plenty of women working, but there were an equal number who preferred to stay home.

Without really intending to, she wandered towards the park where she'd spent so much of her childhood. The stream running through it was frozen over, too shallow to try to skate on, and icicles hung off the edge of the bridge. Snow covered everything in a gentle blanket. It looked like a postcard, something too pretty to actually exist, until she drew closer and saw the footsteps mixing mud into the perfect white. There was a soft layer over it, barely there, so she assumed whoever had left their mark in the snow had done it very early this morning, before the fresh fall.

The owl settled on a branch as she brushed away a spot on the bench and sat down. She looked all around her, remembering the games she used to play here, usually all alone. She would dress up in her costumes and act out stories or plays, never caring what anyone might think. How many hours had she spent here, after school and on the weekends? Certainly more time than she'd spent on her homework in middle school. No, her dedication to her schoolwork hadn't come until later, until she'd needed to focus on it in order to forget.

Did she want to forget anymore? She glanced back at the white owl, who hooted softly. Maybe she didn't…maybe it was only the comparison that was painful, rather than the experience itself.

Steeped in the comfort of this old and familiar place, more familiar than her house these days, she pulled her trusty composition book out from under her coat and leaned back. Writing didn't always make her feel better- sometimes the words surprised her, scared her- but it always felt like coming home.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

_Skunned Knees and Human Tales_

_By Sarah Williams_

_They were playing tag on the staircases again. It didn't seem to matter how many generations came and went through the Goblin City, they all loved to chase each other up and down and all around the staircases. There were actually more humans than goblins playing today; sometimes the proportions shifted. The Aboveground seeme__d to go through phases of belief__; sometimes there would be no one wished away because no one believed, and sometimes they would be deluged with children whose families still half-believed the old stories._

_They'd been playing for hours before it happened; one of the older boys, on the cusp of adulthood, just starting to slide into that brief age of not believing, lost his faith for the stair below him and fell to the floor. There was a loud crack in the midst of the thump, and the children promptly forgot the game to come rushing out of their hiding places. They stared at him with wide eyes, their mouths hanging open at the unaccustomed sound._

_Matthias was scared, but he knew the other children would be as well. He took his responsibility as the eldest very seriously; he was there for them to look up to, when they needed another human. The goblins were their families, but sometimes, in small ways, the children would grow homesick for Aboveground, and then they went to him. He wanted to cry from the pain, but he couldn't; not only was it too young, but he didn't want to make them more frightened. He could tell his leg was broken, could see the edge sticking up at an unnatural angle against the skin, but he couldn't draw breath to tell one of them to fetch a healer. _

_Alais and Luki raced off hand in hand, jumping from staircase to staircase with practiced ease, and made their way down to the bottom level, running past Matthias to the door. Their path through the castle was announced by the squawks of those they pushed aside, and several of the chickens even got to fly for a few brief moments when the servants threw them in shock. They hesitated briefly outside the door they had sought, giving each other encouraging looks._

_Luki was the one to knock, his long ears twisted back flat against his skull in fear. _

_One of the half-fae aides opened the door, glancing down at them in surprise. "Children, his Majesty is very busy-"_

_"Please," Alais blurted out. "Matthias got hurt."_

_Jareth was at the door in an instant, his dark blue eyes concerned. "He got hurt? How?"_

_"He fell."_

_Jareth nodded thoughtfully. He'd been expecting Matthias to fall one of these days; it was a phase that every child went through around his age, where Aboveground instincts momentarily overrode the life they'd come to lead. "How is he hurt?"_

_"He's holding his leg."_

_"Come, let's go to him. Pardith, please send for Sidha."_

_The half-fae nodded as the king went off with the children. _

_Matthias couldn't hide his __relief__ when the Goblin King came into the room and knelt beside him. "Hello, sir."_

_"Hello, Matthias. I hear you took a tumble." Even as he spoke, his eyes assessed the damage. It seemed like a clean break at least. He could only heal small things, bruises and cuts, but he doubted that Sidha would have a problem with it. _

_The other children had come down from the staircases, clustering around their friend and unofficial leader. _

_"Sidha's on her way," Alais announced, taking Matthias' hand. She'd come a long way from the living ghost she'd been upon her arrival. _

_Jareth could see the pallor on the boy's face, the way he was straining against the pain. Gravely, he reached into a pocket of his coat and produced a crystal, pressing it into the boy's free hand. Instantly, the pain receded to a more manageable level. The relief was obvious._

_"Tell us a story, Luki," Matthias managed._

_"What kind of story?"_

_"A human tale," __Weezla suggested, her protuberant eyes even rounder than usual. _

_"Yes, a human tale," echoed the goblins, as well as a few of the human children._

_Luki smiled, reaching out shyly for Alais' other hand. The two had grown very close since her arrival, and were rarely to be seen other than hand in hand. "Once upon a time," he began, as all such stories should begin. _

_As Luki's story held the other children spellbound, Jareth lowered himself completely to the floor, putting an encouraging arm about Matthias' shoulders._

_The boy relaxed slightly against him, his cheeks flushed with __embarrassment__ against the stark whiteness brought by the pain. "I'm sorry we interrupted your duties, sir."_

_"Don't be silly, Matthias. You are my duties, and by far the most important."_

_Even with the throbbing in his leg, Matthias smiled and ducked his head, starting to listen to Luki's story._

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

With a little bit of memory and a great deal of luck, Sarah had managed to get a fire going in the hearth. It blazed merrily, cracking and popping sedately. She'd thrown a handful of cinnamon sticks in with the logs, instantly regretting it when the cloying scent became overpowering, but opening the windows had aired out the room to a more pleasant level.

She and Toby sat on the Oriental rug in front of the fire. She'd loved that rug when she was little, lying on it for hours at a time to trace the intricate designs. A large plastic bowl of fire-popped kettle corn sat between them, emptying rather quickly. In theory, they were making popcorn garlands for the tree. Realistically, they were stuffing their faces.

It was Christmas Eve, and a happier one than she could remember in a long time. Her father and Karen were at yet another office party- seriously, when did they ever get any work done?- and didn't expect to be back until long after midnight. She'd dutifully promised to have Toby in bed by six; it was now a little after ten. Christmas carols floated from the radio over the mantle, the tree sparkled with lights and tinsel, and she was enjoying the time with her baby brother.

When all the popcorn was gone- with only a nine inch garland to show for it- Toby ran out of the room, returning only moments later with one of his favorite books in the world. "Will you read to me?" he asked her, holding out the book.

She smiled when she saw the cover. It was new and glossy, the edges of the pages smooth and unragged, so very unlike the battered book she'd read over and over when she was first learning to read. "Of course," she told him, taking the book. "Come, sit with me."

Grinning, the blond boy squirmed into her lap, nestling between her and the book.

Sarah skimmed through the pages until she found the one she was looking for, the one that had always been her favorite. It was one of the few preferences that hadn't faded as she grew older. "If you are a dreamer, come in," she read aloud, her voice soft against his ear. "If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, a hoper, a prayer, a magic-bean buyer. If you're a pretender, come sit by my fire, for we have some flax-golden tales to spin. Come in, come in, come in!"

Toby giggled and burrowed deeper into her loose embrace. She read him several others, Toby clumsily reciting along with the ones he could remember by heart. She stopped when he tugged lightly on her sleeve.

"What is it, Toby?"

"Can you tell me a story?"

"A story?" she repeated, smiling down at him. "What kind of story?"

"Something true."

Something true? Hmmm…she absently smoothed his golden curls, staring into the fire. As if aware of her scrutiny, the logs shifted and sent up a billow of flame and smoke, resettling into a sedate whisper and flicker of fire. "Something true," she echoed thoughtfully. "All right. But you have to promise me, and I mean promise me, Toby, that you won't breathe a word of this to your mother."

He nodded solemnly, even though she wasn't entirely sure he understood the gravity of the promise he was making. Sarah knew, though, if Karen even suspected what she was about to do, she would never be forgiven, and probably never allowed to speak to Toby again.

"All right, then, something true." She lay back on the rug, her hair fanning around her, and felt him curl up in a tight ball across her stomach. "Once upon a time," she began, as all such stories should begin, "there a young girl who loved her mother very much. When her mother went away, her father remarried, but the girl couldn't help but compare his new wife to her beloved mother, and she grew very angry. Her new stepmother always made her stay home with the baby, and the girl wanted to hate him very much. What no one knew was that the Goblin King had fallen in love with the girl, and gave her special powers. So one night, when her stepmother had been particularly cruel to her, she asked the goblins for help.

"'Say your right words,' the goblins said, 'and we'll take the baby to the Goblin City and you will be free.'.But the girl thought the king of the goblins would keep the baby in his castle forever and ever and turn it into a goblin. So she suffered in silence, until one night, when her stepmother had been yelling at her once more, and her father had been too wrapped up in his new family to give his daughter the attention she craved and needed, she simply couldn't take it anymore.

"She held the baby up before the window in his parents' room, and he wouldn't stop crying. 'Goblin King, Goblin King, wherever you may be, take this child of mine far away from me!', she said, but she had only meant to scare the child, and so the words were the wrong ones. But as she lay the child back down and turned to leave the room, she looked back over her shoulder, and said the right ones. 'I wish the goblins _would_ come take you away right now.'. All was suddenly silent, and when she went back into the room, her brother was gone.

"The Goblin King appeared and offered her everything she could ever want, everything she could hope for or dream of, if only she would forget the baby. But she couldn't do that. Her brother was frustrating, and she hadn't wanted him, but he was still her brother. She couldn't just forget him. The Goblin King had only done what she had asked but for love of her, he gave her a chance at what she wanted now. He gave her thirteen hours in which to run through the Labyrinth to the castle beyond the Goblin City. If she could reclaim her brother within those thirteen hours, if she could beat his labyrinth, then she and her brother could go home.

"The girl took a great deal for granted, and couldn't get very far on her own. Her own arrogance and false bravado led her to mistake, to trust those she shouldn't and mistrust those who could have helped her more. But she made her way through, despite all the setbacks, despite all the tricks and turns, and arrived at the End of Time in the castle beyond the Goblin City. She began the ancient charm that would defeat the labyrinth and win her back her brother. The Goblin King pleaded with her, again offered her the entire world if she would only love him in return. But the girl was young and afraid, and she didn't understand the truth of what he was offering her. She wounded him without even realizing, and triumphed over her victory.

"She won back her brother, taking him home Aboveground, where she grew to truly love him. After all, having gone through so much for him, even if she caused it, she was more inclined to be forgiving of the faults he couldn't help. But she never really forgot the Goblin King, never really forgot the strange world Underground and the haunting turns of the labyrinth. For her brother's sake, because his mother grew very angry, she pretended it was all a dream, a strange story that she'd read one time too many. But she didn't forget."

Sarah looked down; Toby was fast asleep, one thumb twitching towards his mouth as he snored softly. She smiled and stroked his hair again, trying not to wake him up as she lifted him and stood. Carrying him up the stairs, she put him carefully to bed, tucking Lancelot securely under one small arm. She was glad she'd had the foresight to change him into pajamas after dinner; she'd thought he might fall asleep before too long, especially so long after his normal bedtime.

Sitting beside him on the small 'big kid' bed, she wondered at how much the story had changed. What it truly just time that had effected the changes? Or was it something more, something that skirted too close to the edges of an unwritten rule?

She shook her head and quietly closed the door to Toby's room, retreating back downstairs. She wasn't quite ready to go to bed yet. She made herself a sturdy mug of hot chocolate, wrapped herself in coat and scarf, and went out to the porch, her breath frosting the air in misty plumes. She leaned against the railing, the warmth rising from the liquid to breathe a pink flush into her cheeks. A soft sound drew her attention upwards.

"Merry Christmas," she told the white owl, whose golden eyes stared at her unblinkingly.

Staring out over the white washed neighborhood, she realized there was one more thing she had to do before the hushed expectancy of Christmas Eve gave way to Christmas morning. She set her mug hurriedly on the ledge and raced back inside, making her steps as light as possible on the carpeted stairs. Kneeling next to her old bed, she reached deep in between the lumpy mattresses and withdrew a small, battered volume whose red leather cover had long since faded to a cracked rose.

She stared at it for several long moments, then rose to her feet and moved back into Toby's room. She slid the book under his mattress, trapping it between the cloth and the wooden frame. "It's yours now, Toby," she breathed. "I don't need it anymore."

The little boy murmured in his sleep, turning over to blink at her with dream-soaked eyes. "Sarah?"

"I'm here." She leaned forward and kissed his forehead tenderly. "I'm here."

"Will you stay here?"

"All night," she promised, settling down onto the floor beside him. "Toby?"

"Yeah?"

"Would you miss me if I went away?"

"I always miss you," he yawned into his hand, curling back into the blankets and Lancelot.

Sighing, she took his hand and counted the breaths that passed.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

_Growth and Development 101_

_By Sarah Williams_

_It is a truth universally acknowledged that a faerie will always try to fly before his or her wings are ready to support __them. Just__ as junk ladies will try to carry more than their back has strength, just as Rock-callers will bellow themselves hoarse before the stones will come, faeries –especially male faeries- will try to fly before their wings are fully developed. They stretch them, flutter them, at every __opportunity__, seeing if today is the day when they'll lift that millimeter off the ground, when the muscles of their back will clench with the anticipation of finally flying. _

_For Lynwood, today was that magical day. He woke to sunlight streaming through the broken bits of colored glass that lines the edges of the faeries' territory. He stood and shucked off the blanket of spider-web, stretching broadly, his wings fluttering almost absently behind him. _

_And his feet lifted ever-so-slightly off the floor._

_He wasn't sure he believed it at first, but there it was, again! Without stopping to think about whether or not it was the smartest thing he could be doing, he raced up to the top of the crumbling building and fully faced the sunrise over the labyrinth. He took a deep breath, then another, and launched himself off the edge of the stone._

_And promptly fell like a rock._

_His wings caught him at the last possible second, the soles of his feet brushing against the dirt, before he shot back up into the air. His loud cheer woke up many of the others, who came running out still tangled in their blankets for fear his shouts betokened something wrong. Those who remembered their own joyous day stood and smiled, while the eldest faeries __kvetched__ and the youngest looked on jealously._

_Lynwood swooped and soared, learning the minute adjustments to his balance that were necessary for smooth and graceful flying. He was jerky at first, his movements uncoordinated, but others took the air with helpful- and not so helpful- advice. Other adolescents teased him loudly, pushing up against him to see if they could knock him off balance._

_Lynwood didn't care; he was just glad to be flying. _

_His family put together an impromptu celebration when the sun was high, every faerie in their colony bringing something to add to the __meager__food__ supply. One family brought acorn shells full of water, another family gave a thimble of honey, and others brought bits of fruits and vegetables. The clan leaders proudly offered the hummingbird they'd hunted and killed- Unseelie faeries have very different diets than their Seelie cousins, after all. _

_Being a young male of any species, especially a young male faerie who's just grown into his wings, Lynwood thoroughly enjoyed being the center of attention. His chest puffed out amidst the bits and __scraps of ragged silk, once colorful but faded to the same murky brown as much of the rest of the labyrinth. _

_Pyreleaf, a female faerie just a few hours older than Lynwood, but whose wings had matured several weeks before, flew circles with him, her wingtips brushing teasingly against his. When they landed to partake of the roast hummingbird, she kissed him lightly._

_He stared at her as she tossed her hair, red and gold like autumn leaves, back over her shoulder. "You flew away the last three times I tried that!"_

_"You were too young then."_

_"It was yesterday!"_

_With a wicked laugh, she kicked off the ground again, and he followed, the two spiraling higher in a flurry of laughing young faeries. _

_Far below, a sudden cry brought their attention back from the freedom and joy of the air. The clan leaders rose a few inches off the ground, their rose thorn sabers clutched tightly in their hands. "The infants! There's a sparrow!"_

_The adolescents looked down to the small corner of the yard where the infants liked best to play, where bricks had partially broken to make a warren of holes and pockets. Sure enough, a large sparrow in the drab browns and blacks of a female, stood pecking its lethal beak into the pockets, digging to try to get at the infant faeries._

_An idea jumped into Lynwood's mind, but he wasn't sure it was going to work. He nudged Pyreleaf in the side, nudging her harder when she didn't respond. "Pyreleaf!"_

_"What?!"_

_"Remember what we all used to do when one of us did something wrong?"_

_She looked back at him, her eyes wide, and slowly nodded. She __raised__ her voice just loud enough to be heard by the other adolescents hovering together in a swarm. "Distraction is the name of the game."_

_The others nodded bravely, and because it was his idea, Lynwood gulped and took the first run. He flew directly at the sparrow, landing hard between its wings and launching off again with the __same motion__. The bird squawked loudly and turned around, its gimlet eyes fixing on the insolent young male. He took a couple of hopping steps, but Lynwood kept just out of reach, his back starting to ache from the unaccustomed strain. Just when he was getting __too__ tired to continue, Pyreleaf knocked him out of the way, shouting a word at the bird that under normal circumstances would have put her in a lot of trouble with the clan elders. _

_When Pyreleaf got tired, her twin brother Luckleaf took over. From Luckleaf, it was Twigsty, then Hawkeye, then Spiderwick, then Silkweb, then Needlefall, then Branchley, and then it was Lynwood's turn again. His muscles were still burning, but he'd had a few minutes to rest them, and it was important to __protect the infants. He flew at the bird, and recklessly kicked right at its eye, his foot passing within a hair's breadth of the murderous beak. He scored and the sparrow let out a sour note, hopping away before lurching into an ungainly flight away from the territory._

_The adolescents received a mild scolding for putting themselves in harm's way, but with the rescued infants swarming over them, it was hard to make any kind of punishment stick. Lynwood and Pyreleaf shared a look and stifled impish grins; it wasn't a bad day's work for a new pair of wings._

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sarah fidgeted all through final landing, her fingers drumming against her thighs as the plane drew up even with the bridge to the flight terminal. She couldn't seem to keep still while the shuttle trundled over to the main building and she found herself wanting to swear with impatience at the people in front of her who simply stood on the escalator and let it slowly carry them downwards. She wasn't even entirely sure why she was so anxious- though she had her suspicions- and those were confirmed when she reached baggage claim and saw Jareth waiting, his back to her as he read the incoming flight information. Her heart thudded painfully in her chest, and she actually had to stop to catch her breath.

She'd found one of her old poet's shirts in the attic and put it on out of whimsy, leaving the mossy green chenille scarf draped loosely about her neck. She'd found one of her older vests, too, the one that looked like a curtain or carpetbag, but it had fallen victim to moths over the years, so she had let it fall back into the box. "Jareth," she whispered.

He couldn't have heard her- couldn't _possibly_ have heard her- but he turned around, a whimsical smile curving his thin lips. He was wearing a black silk shirt, making the brilliant scarlet of the rose he was twirling in his hand stand out all the brighter. "Welcome home," he called across to her.

Ignoring the amused and disgruntled looks of the other passengers, she raced ahead and threw herself in his arms, feeling his silent chuckle through the movement of his chest. "I missed you," she murmured, and was gratified to feel his arms tighten about her.

"Missed you, too." He tilted her chin back and gave her a long, thorough kiss that sent her reeling.

"I wish…"

His gaze suddenly intensified, focused entirely on her, and she wondered if he was even seeing the world around them anymore. "What, Sarah? What do you wish?"

She bit her lip, staring up at him. What if she was wrong? What if it wasn't truth at all, but some sick, twisted set of coincidences? She hesitated, her courage deserting her, but she could feel the weight of his mother's pendant against her chest and the terrible hope and patience in his eyes, and prayed she wasn't wrong.

"I wish the goblins would come and take me away right now."


	9. Thanks for the Memories

**Disclaimer: Ya'll should really be use to this by now, I don't own any of it.**

_A/N: And here it is, the FINAL CHAPTER!!! Duh duh duh….I know, I know, I'm evil. But just because it's over doesn't mean you can't still review. I want to know what you think! Oh, and stay tuned for another story; it will be a little while before I start posting it, because I've got other things I have to finish up first, but keep an eye out for it, it will be entitled __Fragile Wings_

**Chapter Nine: Thanks for the Memories**

When Arthur Peables unlocked the door to his office during pre-planning, he was rather surprised to see a three-inch three ring binder on his desk. He'd cleaned off his desk entirely when the fall semester finished, leaving only the tacky plastic and wood nameplate and a coffee mug. His wife had laughed t him for bragging about his accomplishment; the project had only been six years in the procrastination. Was this a joke from the cleaning crew? A terrifying new set of directives from the department head?

Setting his briefcase on the otherwise clean surface, Arthur opened the notebook and leafed curiously through the pages. They held dozens of short stories and vignettes, many accompanied by highly detailed ink drawings. As he skimmed, bits and pieces caught his eye, fragments of thought leaping from the paper to twine teasingly about his brain.

"These are quite good," he mused. "I don't know why they're on my desk, but they're quite good."

Arthur flipped back to the very front and settled more comfortably into his chair, resting the notebook against his knee. The first page had READ ME emblazoned across the top in brilliant green; all right, he'd it through. At the very least, it let him put off typing the syllabuses for a little while.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

_Eternity in Thirteen Hours_

_By Sarah Williams_

_Once upon a time and twice upon a time, which is no time and every time, and any time one may imagine, there was a young woman who entirely misunderstood her significance in the world. In the selfish manner of adolescents, she believed she was due more than she had earned. She understood so little of the truth of love that she failed to recognize it when it was plainly offered. What should have been seen as a growth of love, she saw only as betrayal. What should have been celebrated was met instead with anger._

_And in the manner of adolescents, she sought to shift the blame for her own deficiencies always onto others. When she grew petulant at what she was asked to do, she insisted that she was asked too much. When the world did not rearrange itself to suit her wishes, she insisted that it wasn't fair. She __would learn that such things were the way of the world; that people were small and insignificant, and the world did not change itself for anyone. But she would not learn such lessons easily, nor immediately._

_It took a great experience to cause her to first question these staunchly held beliefs. Even with that, it did not do so immediately._

_The girl had a much younger half-brother, and being of great imagination, she wished him away to the goblins. But despite her selfishness, she was still aware of the blood that bound them. And, perhaps, she also feared the punishment that would surely follow were the more pragmatic and disbelieving adults to question his absence. No matter the reason, she endeavored to reclaim him from her own mistake._

_She was ultimately successful, though the nature of that success could be called somewhat into question. In later years, she could never be entirely sure if she had truly won or if she had merely been allowed to do so. Had the Goblin King not sworn love for her? Had he not told her, there in the end, that he had given her everything she had wanted? Had she wanted to win so badly that he had allowed her to do so?_

_As she grew to love her brother, for brother he was despite his mother, questions of this manner haunted her more and more. __For all her pretended worldliness, she had only just begun to see what the world truly held. She had seen, for the first time, real betrayal, and had also seen its redemption. She had seen courage in the unlikeliest of places, a strength and compassion in the most frightening faces, and frivolity in the midst of savagery. She had seen obsession and ruthlessness, she had seen purpose, and she had seen kindness._

_In that small fraction of ancient mythology come to life, she had seen more of her world than in fifteen years, and she found she could not close her eyes again, though she tried._

_In her dreams, she saw again his eyes, watching her, haunting her, studying her. She heard his voice echo through her disillusion, offering her everything she wanted, if she would just forget._

_Four years passed in that transitory state, where maturity and growth find silent depths. She had learned to appreciate the quietude of peace, to find in thoughts a peace that the empty companionship of others could not provide. She learned to still her tongue, to consider carefully each word before it emerged. Was it as fair as words would allow her to be? She had injured, once, without understanding the pain she caused; she was resolved not to repeat it in ignorance._

_She grew distant without meaning to, but having seen the great connections that could be forged in the midst of __adversity;__ she found the more shallow ties of __acquaintanceship__ to be difficult to bear. She drifted through her years of school, seeing another world behind her eyes every time she blinked. She was out of place with every breath, and was beginning to wonder if perhaps she should have accepted what she was offered._

_But then she would realize how much she'd grown__, and understood that she needed that depth. She needed to understand what she had done, what she had lost with that unthinking refusal. She needed to understand that things were not always as they seemed._

_Her growth continued as she left her father's house, expanding and broadening as the boundaries previously around her could not allow. Under the tutelage of her instructors, she learned once again to question, to challenge, and each memory and wisp of dream grew ever more dear. It was here, in the place of learning, that she was given the __opportunity__ to show her newfound __enlightenment_

_They met again, the girl and the Goblin King, each with a greater respect and understanding for the other. He had come to understand the frailties of human youths, and how he had scared her in her innocence. She, in turn, understood more clearly that while he may have been a man in love, he was also a king with responsibilities. Their courtship was not without its setbacks, for understanding does not always equate the ability of practical application. _

_Were things as they seemed to be? No, and yet, yes. __He drew her carefully from the oubliette she'd crafted for herself, and she learned to trust the feel of her hand in his. _

_Was it truth or illusion? Did it really matter? _

_The world in which she'd been raised had twelve hours. Twelve staid, solid, dependable hours. The clock ticked in regular intervals, ticking away the seconds, ticking away the minutes, ticking away those twelve hours. Perfect and round, evenly __divisible__ into three fours or four threes, six twos or two sixes. Everything about it was smooth and circular, flawless and meant to lull the eye and the mind into easy complacency._

_But there, in the Underground, she'd learned a world of thirteen hours. Thirteen, a prime number, historically an unlucky number. __It could not fracture, it could not divide, it could not be less than that which it was. It was not perfectly round, but rather an oval of sorts, a bumpy, irregular progress that required all the wit of an active mind to follow on its course. It required patience, and attention, and perhaps most of all it required a great deal of luck, for the hours occasionally took it upon themselves to arbitrarily shift positions around the clock. Looking at only the clock wasn't enough; one had to know its context, the hour it had decried before, and what it would decry after._

_The Goblin King took her back into that world of thirteen hours with every touch of his hand, every brush of his lips, every stroke of himself against her. Every word he murmured into her ear __echoed__ with the timelessness of those thirteen hours, with the terrible patience that extra hour engendered. The twelve hours fell away and took with them their boring, dependable foundations, suspending her between floating and falling, between up and down, between right and left and right and wrong. Thus hovering, even thirteen hours ceased to be, ceased to mean. She simply was, and in that unbearable lightness of being, learned to love._

_The girl knew that the safety of the Underground depended upon the pragmatism of the world Above, relied upon the age of not believing expanding and enveloping. The time of great heroes and myths, when the races could mix with a wonderful story to show for the confusion and chaos of the __mystical__ quests, was done. To truly love this Goblin King was not a simple matter of choosing him._

_Not just of choosing him._

_It was of choosing him over everything else her life held. It was choosing him over the potential career, the future schooling. It was choosing him over the few friends she had, the friends she could __make. It was choosing him over the respect and admiration of the professors at her institution, of her classmates and peers. It was choosing him over her baby brother._

_Mortals were meant to forget the Underground, to forget the Labyrinth once they had passed from its grip. They remembered, for a time only, just long enough to be regretful, to realize they'd done something very wrong, and then human nature reasserted itself, they forgot the birth of magic, and their minds supplied them with another __explanation__ of the child's absence, another reason that could be truth, no matter that it wasn't._

_The girl hadn't forgotten, and because of her, her brother never entirely had either, but he would, if she chose this Goblin King. She could see him from afar if she made that choice, but never again would she hold him close against her and breathe his little boy smell, mixed with that __indefinable__ scent that was uniquely her baby brother. She could watch him learn and falter, could watch him grow and fall and stand tall, but she could never whisper advice in his ear, never be a shoulder to cry upon when life was unfair. It would mean losing him in every way that mattered._

_But still there was the __irresistible__ lure of eternity in thirteen hours, and everything those hours could give her. She was drawn to the promise of days of exploration, of finding out how much had been real and how much- if any- had been imagined. She was __mesmerized__ by the darkness of her passion, by the chance to spend her nights straining in the arms of the man she knew loved her with every __fiber__ of his being, no matter how amused and arrogant that being was. _

_It was not an easy choice to make, certainly not one to make lightly, but she made it. She chose eternity in thirteen hours, chose the promise and the lure, __and chose__ the darkly sardonic and ironic and bucolic. She chose the memories that had once been dreams, the secrets that were now her domain. She chose to forge a place within the broken, battered angels she had once helped to create, to give of __heselfr__ aught they could ever need. _

_She chose that extra hour, and in so choosing unlocked the door to a labyrinth, to a life darker and more lovely than even she could ever have dreamed._

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Arthur scratched at his flyaway brown hair, automatically and absentmindedly smoothing it back over the growing bald spot. The piece was beautifully written, if purposefully disjointed; it almost seemed like the writer had been thinking out some kind of decision for herself as she wrote. It should have been very familiar to him, and some neglected, intuitive voice in the back of his mind screamed at him, but he didn't know how to hear it.

"Sarah Williams," he murmured. "Who the hell is Sarah Williams?"


End file.
